


Independence

by melodycanta



Category: Uta no Prince-sama
Genre: Coming of Age, Gen, M/M, Mild Language, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-05-15 19:42:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 37,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14796722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melodycanta/pseuds/melodycanta
Summary: After STARISH's debut, Tokiya becomes confused about his feelings on his roommate, his new life as an idol, and his identity.





	1. Maji LOVE 1000%

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QueenOfThePirates](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfThePirates/gifts).



> Note: I really do mean slow burn. Like, SLOW, slow.
> 
> This is semi-AU because I'm pretty much discarding everything that happens after the first season. I'm ignoring HEAVENS, song chronology, and pretty much anything else I'm too lazy to research, so if you want to call this an AU, I guess that would be fair. Honorifics are kind of in this because I'm assuming I'm right on how they address each other . . . I'm too lazy to go back and look.
> 
> Short first chapter; I think all of the others are longer than this.

When he looks back now, Tokiya can remember the exact moment he fell in love with Otoya Ittoki.

It’s during the bridge when they perform Maji LOVE 1000% for their debut. The lights are shining down on them as if to put a spotlight on all of their hard work coming to fruition. Tokiya’s not unfamiliar to performing like some of the other members of STARISH are, but there’s a weird amount of pressure on him, as this is the first time he’s really performed as someone other than HAYATO. He finds himself glancing over at Otoya next to him out of habit—the redhead is excellent at dancing—and that’s when it happens.

Otoya happens to be looking back and sends him a wink.

Tokiya’s heart thuds so hard in his chest that for a moment, everything else stops. It’s a single beat that vibrates in his chest and sends aftershocks through the rest of him. Without his brain to direct it, his body slips into the choreography with the assistance of muscle memory, which is a bit of a relief because he feels like he’s been swept away like a leaf in a hurricane. His mind reels, and it doesn’t stop until the song ends, when the applause and cheering taking the place of the music.

He manages to slide a smile over his stunned expression, celebrating with the others until they get into the dressing room. They’re all sweating after dancing with the hot stage lights on them, and Ren complains about his image as they enter the small room. It’s not any cooler in here, and most of them start stripping pieces from their uniforms. Tokiya stands rooted to the spot as Otoya peels his vest and shirt from his body. 

It’s not the first time he’s seen Otoya half-naked; they’re roommates after all, and they share a bedroom during the hot summer months where it’s too warm to sleep in anything more than a pair of sleep pants. Still, there’s something different now, like Tokiya is looking through a different lens. Otoya is lean and sleek in a way that favors function over form but is still striking all the same. Even worse, he’s never felt this way about the male form. He can admit beauty, but to be actually attracted to it is something completely different. 

“Tokiya-kun? Hello?” 

“His face is pretty red; maybe we should take him outside.”

“Fresh air might do him some good.”

He’s suddenly aware of the fact that he’s been standing there as the other members of STARISH have crowded around him, trying to get him to react. Otoya himself is waving him with a little white hand fan. 

“Sorry. I think I need to step out,” he quickly excuses himself, jerking away from them all. 

There are some protests, but he quickly escapes as the headmaster enters the room from the other door. He figures he’ll learn what his visit is for once he gets his head back on his shoulders, because right now, it’s still spinning in circles like a globe.

Syo has snuck after him and raises an eyebrow at his unspoken question, pointing out that he probably shouldn’t be left alone after whatever his weird spell was back there, which Tokiya would agree with it if it were anyone else, but he just wants some time alone.

“Hey, you’re probably a little overwhelmed. No one would blame you,” Syo says when the silence feels too heavy. “I mean, you’ve been trying to get away from the HAYATO name for how long?”

“A long time,” he says, having to swallow the excess saliva in his mouth. Of course, that’s all his weird reaction is. It’s some weird release of stress that has now attached itself to his roommate. It’s logical, in an illogical way, but Tokiya will take it.

They stay out there for a while longer, Syo occasionally talking about how good it felt to be on stage with the rest of the group, before he suggests they go back in. When they reenter, Tokiya apologizes to the others, pretending to be slightly dehydrated, to which there’s both exclamations of concern and skepticism.

For Otoya’s part, he just fishes a cold water bottle out of the fridge and tosses it to Tokiya, slapping him on the shoulder with a small smile on his lips. There’s a weird, unspoken acknowledgement between the two of them; Tokiya will talk about it when he’s ready.


	2. Agnadance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Agnadance causes problems for the roommates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is the first chapter that is really breaking from canon, because I'm ignoring the entire second season and just adding Cecil as part of STARISH with no questions asked. You can make up your own ideas as for why he joined, but really, what boy band doesn't need a resident cat prince?
> 
> I also have no idea where Reiji's mother's bento restaurant is, but I've made it nearby. This is probably wrong, but I don't really care. :) Also, Reiji himself is an interesting character that definitely will get more screen time later because I love the ROT broship.
> 
> This is the obligatory injury chapter, and if you think they're going to get together in this chapter . . . no. It's a slower burn than two chapters.
> 
> EDIT 5/30/18: Changing Reiji's nickname for Tokiya to "Tokki" after listening to it/seeing it romanized in Shining Live.

The choice to enroll in the Masters Course is obvious for STARISH. They’re too new, and Tokiya is still trying to differentiate himself from HAYATO, so more guidance is always appreciated. Tokiya’s just not sure he appreciates his new mentor.

Reiji Kotobuki is irreverent and brash and coupled with Otoya, he can already feel the headache coming on. Still, even with his blatant familiarity and strange living habits, there is more to Reiji than meets the eye. He’s always smiling, but he’s not always _smiling_. The expression rarely reaches his eyes, and when it does, it means he’s particularly fond of something. It’s not much of a surprise when that expression turns to Otoya first.

Reiji and Otoya get along like peanut butter and jelly. It’s the quickest brother dynamic he’s ever seen form, even in movies. Reiji is fond enough of Tokiya, but he likes Otoya, and there’s a difference. “I might like you too, if you ever let me in, Tokki,” Reiji says casually as they eat at his mother’s bento restaurant. Reiji considers this a bonding activity, and since his mother cooks healthy food, Tokiya can’t complain. 

“I let you in,” he responds, picking up a piece of tomato with his chopsticks.

“Do you? I haven’t noticed.” The eternal smile is still on Reiji’s face, but his eyes aren’t smiling, and that’s enough to tell Tokiya that he’s serious about this. “Aren’t you wondering why I haven’t assigned you extra work outside of class?”

He’s aware that Reiji has assigned Otoya extra singing lessons, which have really paid off in their group practices as they perfect Mirai Chizu. Tokiya, on the other hand, hadn’t been given anything than the occasional dance assignment and some requests to tutor singing. He’d assumed for some absurd reason that since he was technically an older idol than Reiji, his mentor hadn’t felt comfortable giving him anything. Which, now that he thinks about it, Reiji was more than happy to worm his way into everything else, so citing seniority would have been so out of character that it should have made Tokiya worry more. “You want me to bond with you?” he asks skeptically.

“Or someone else. I’m your mentor, so I guess I would understand if you wanted to confide in someone else. What about Otoyan?”

“We’re friends,” Tokiya feels the absurd need to defend. It’s true; he’s probably closer to Otoya than anyone else after living together for a year and a few months. They’ve made it work for them; Tokiya is mean, Otoya brushes it off, Otoya drags him to events, and Tokiya pretends to hate being there even though he enjoys it. It’s their dynamic, even if it is a little bizarre.

“Sure, you are.” Reiji snickers, and Tokiya decides he doesn’t like the sound when it’s directed at him. The door to the restaurant opens, and Reiji waves the entering Otoya over to their table. “Otoyan! Here!”

Otoya brightens when he sees them, and he quickly slings his backpack under the table as he slides into the booth next to Reiji. “Rei-chan! Tokiya-kun!”

“How was your lesson?” Tokiya asks, because he’s going to show Reiji that they _are_ friends and they do talk like friends.

“Good. I’m still not as good as you, of course, but I’m learning!”

Reiji’s mother comes over with a bento already in her hands, which Tokiya thinks is strange, since Otoya has just arrived and hasn’t ordered, but she sets it down in front of the redhead with a smile on her face. “You’ll have to tell me how my curry rice measures up,” she tells him. 

“It looks fantastic!” he says, and she pets his head in a clearly mothering way before walking away.

At the table, Otoya has already descended upon the bento with relish, which Tokiya notes in surprise that he apparently really enjoys curry. He’s surprised that he hasn’t seen Otoya cook it before, since honestly, it’s not that hard. Then again, Otoya does eat like a bachelor when Tokiya or Reiji doesn’t cook, so maybe it’s not that much of a surprise.

“Good?” Reiji asks with just enough humor in his voice to not sound sarcastic. 

“It’s really good!” Otoya says through a mouthful. 

“I didn’t realize you liked curry this much,” Tokiya says before realizing Reiji has set him up exactly for this moment if the smirk on his mentor’s face is any indication.

Otoya doesn’t seem to notice, shrugging. “I’m sure I’ve mentioned it at some point. It’s my favorite.” He straightens and scratches his head with his free hand. “I’m definitely not eating like an idol though. Sorry.”

“Life’s too short to be concerned about that!” Reiji reassures him, laughing it off.

Tokiya meets Reiji’s gaze to let him know: message received.

 

If there’s one thing Reiji Kotobuki knows, it’s how to function in a broken idol group, and Tokiya knows this is something he needs to work on if Reiji is concerned about it. He takes the opportunity to bond with them more when the group is in transition as Cecil joins. He helps out Masato with his acting role, since he’s had plenty of experience, and mentors Cecil on singing. He’s even become a bit more open with Otoya, although the first time he’d cracked a joke, the redhead had looked at him like he’d seen a ghost before asking if he was sure he was feeling alright.

Still, it’s now a stronger bridge between them. They hang out in the front room and instead of Tokiya making barbed comments whenever Otoya does something stupid, he throws a pillow, which usually makes Otoya laugh. They’re actually acting like friends now, even if there’s something under the surface that Tokiya is still confused about. He can’t stop associating his roommate with that moment during their debut where he had winked and Tokiya’d had the closest thing to an out-of-body experience he’d ever had. He hasn’t dared to say anything about it either. 

It feels like there’s still something missing though. Otoya and Syo are the two best dancers in the group, and they work tirelessly to get Cecil up to par, which results in a lot of long nights. Cecil has this dance he likes to do instead, which is just to open his arms and spin in a circle, which he calls the “Agnadance”. For some inexplicable reason, the urge to join him is immense until Cecil stops, and one night as they lie on opposite couches, Otoya admits that he kind of wants to do it in the middle of their living room.

“Don’t,” Tokiya advises him, gaze flickering up from his book. “I’ll leave you doing it until morning.” He leaves out that Reiji will likely save him once he gets home from the Quartet Night rehearsal.

“Maybe without Cecil here it won’t have the same effect,” Otoya says and gets up from his couch. He starts to spin, and Tokiya rolls his eyes before throwing the normal pillow at him.

He hasn’t accounted for how the movement puts Otoya off-balance or the fact that he’s not looking when Tokiya throws it. He hasn’t thought about how close Otoya is to the end table next to the couch or the fact that the pillow is going to hit him in the head like always. Instead, Tokiya throws the pillow, and the next minute, there’s a loud bang as Otoya falls, his head colliding with the end table.

The sound echoes, and Tokiya’s heart is in his throat as he scrambles up from the couch to make sure he hasn’t just killed his roommate. Otoya is blinking hard, and his hand cradles against where he collided. “Ow,” he finally says.

“Are you okay?” Tokiya asks.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.” Under a very watchful eye, he eases up into a sitting position, and Tokiya can see his face has paled a few shades.

“We need to get you to a doctor.”

“I’m fine.” There’s something weird in Otoya’s tone as he says this but Tokiya brushes the thought aside.

“You just smashed your head into a table.”

“Yeah. It’s hard, see?” Otoya takes the hand not pressed to his head to knock his knuckles against the uninjured half.

“You need to get that checked out,” Tokiya says, undeterred.

“I’m fine!”

“No, you’re not!”

“Tokiya!” Both the tone and the word make him pause. It’s the first time Otoya has said his name without an honorific, sure, but it’s the way it’s said that makes him really worry. Otoya is serious occasionally, but he’s never sounded so desperate. Tokiya’s heart constricts in his chest as he looks away, trying to think of a good argument, and his eyes spot the remnants of blood on the side of the table. 

“You’re bleeding. We don’t have anything for you to bandage with. Come on.”

Maybe Otoya understands that his calm tone is covering up more panic than he can remember feeling ever or maybe his argument is just enough, but Otoya allows him to pull him to his feet. He sways as he does so, and Tokiya steps under his arm to support him, realizing he’s probably concussed at the very least. It pushes him to get them out of the room as soon as possible. 

The walk to the hospital is quiet for once, and Tokiya wishes Otoya would say something and chatter on like normal. He’d even take it if Otoya complained about not having a jacket in this cold winter air. The only thing he says though, once they’re in sight of the hospital, is “I’m sorry,” like doing this is a burden. Tokiya’s throat is too tight to respond.

Otoya is taken into the back quickly, and Tokiya sits in the waiting room miserably. Once he’d notified the rest of STARISH and Reiji, there wasn’t much more to do. He’s not sure if they should come or not, and he defaults to no, just because he knows how hard Otoya fought against going to the hospital in the first place.

Reiji comes anyways, because Reiji does what Reiji wants, and there’s no doubt he’s worried about their roommate too.

He takes a seat next to Tokiya. “You okay?” he asks, and the question is solemn. Reiji’s normal smile is gone for now.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“Accidents happen. It could have easily been that one of you fell off a stage while dancing. Ran-Ran punched me once and knocked out my tooth.”

“It was an accident that he punched you?” Tokiya asks skeptically.

“Oh no, he meant to do that. He didn’t mean to knock out my tooth though. We went three weeks before I could sing again without a whistling sound hitting the mic.”

Tokiya snorts despite himself. “Yeah, he didn’t almost kill you.”

“I think he’d like to try sometimes.” Reiji leans back against the seat. “You can’t tell me this is your first near-death experience though.”

It wasn’t; during his stint as HAYATO, one of the light techs had almost died after a suspended light fell on him. “I didn’t cause that one.”

“You were performing; it was as much of a cause for them to be there as it was their job.” Despite his harsh words, he delivers them gently. “What’s got you?”

Tokiya takes a deep breath and releases it. “He didn’t want to come to the hospital. I had to fight him on it and . . .”

“What? Did you two trade insults or something? I thought that was your thing.”

“He seemed scared to come. And I don’t know why.”

Reiji considers that for a moment. “I don’t know either.”

They don’t talk after that, but Tokiya can’t help but be thankful for his mentor’s presence. Despite his stunts and set ups, and everything else that Reiji pulled, it really did seem like he was there for them.

Eventually, Otoya is released with a clip of paperwork. “It’s a concussion,” he says, self-consciously touching the bandages wrapped around his head. “I have to be woken up every two hours and I’m off work for the next two days.”

Reiji acts every bit the older brother, examining him for injuries before hugging him. “Let’s get you home, okay?” He puts a hand on both of their shoulders and then ushers them out of the hospital in front of him.

“Sorry,” Otoya says as they walk back. Reiji is walking a few steps behind them, as if he realizes they need some privacy, although there’s no doubt he’s listening.

“I’m the one who made you fall. Why are you still apologizing?” Tokiya asks.

He shakes his head. “I mean, I’m sorry for snapping at you. And not using the honorific. That was rude.”

Oh. Tokiya’s forgotten about that already; he’s been more concerned with how terrified Otoya seemed to be to go to the hospital. “It’s fine,” he quickly says. His nerves are fried; he can’t take much more emotional stuff right now, and he’s sure it leaks into his tone, because Otoya looks away quickly and then stops walking.

“You okay, Otoyan?” Reiji asks, catching up to them.

“Yeah. I can’t turn my head too quick, I guess,” he mutters. “Sorry.”

“Nothing to apologize for! We’ll look out for anything you might need to look at, right, Tokki?”

“Yeah.” Tokiya feels weird now that the danger has passed; it’s like his head is too big for his body and he just wants to curl up and mope under a blanket. 

They get Otoya settled on a futon in the living room fairly quickly. The redhead is still quiet, and so far he’s only protested when Reiji wanted to give him the full bed by pointing out that he’d need to wake up every two hours and didn’t want to wake them up. Neither Tokiya nor Reiji told him that they’d probably be awake the entire night to make sure he did.

Reiji cleans up the small bits of blood from the incident and prepares an ice pack to slip under the pillowcase, and Tokiya arranges the blankets into a bed after pulling the futon out. By the time they get that done, Otoya has brushed his teeth and gotten into the warmest pajamas he owns. He slips under the covers, and it doesn’t take long for him to fall asleep, curled up into the fetal position.

Tokiya and Reiji sit on the couch facing him, a timer on the coffee table counting down two hours. Reiji goes over his musical scores while Tokiya tries to get back into the book he had been reading before Otoya fell. It’s not going well; he’s stuck on the same sentence, and he can almost see the scene play out over and over again. Eventually, he gives up and just stares at Otoya, watching the gentle rise and fall of his form under the blankets. 

It doesn’t make him feel any better.

Reiji eventually retires to the bedroom after Tokiya insists he can stay up to watch Otoya. The timer has gone off twice now, and each time, Otoya blinks at them blearily, answers the questions they have to ask him, and then curls back up to go back to sleep. 

It’s around four in the morning when Tokiya goes to wake him up again and realizes he’s shivering, the blankets muffling the sound. He wakes him up, using slightly more force than is probably necessary in his concern, and the redhead wakes up dutifully, his yawn cut short by a shiver. “Tokiya?” he asks through chattering teeth.

Tokiya slides a hand under his bangs, feeling his forehead, but he feels like he’s a normal temperature. He’s not sweating either. “What’s your name?” he asks softly, making sure not to impart any of his concern into his voice.

“Otoya Ittoki.”

“Good. How do you feel?” 

Otoya gives another shiver. “I’m cold.”

Oh. Duh. That seems like it would be the obvious answer, and Tokiya feels dumb. “I’ll get you another blanket,” he says. The living room is always quite a bit cooler than the bedroom, and it’s not like Tokiya is going to be sleeping in his bed, so he takes some of the linens off of it, tucking them around Otoya’s prone form. 

Otoya falls back asleep without much further hassle, but the shivering doesn’t stop. Tokiya sits on the edge of the futon, listening to it to see if it lessens any. It’s doesn’t, and Otoya’s head is almost under the blankets at this point.

He will blame his tired brain in the morning, he resolves as he slides into the futon next to his roommate. Otoya’s skin is cool to the touch, and goosebumps line his arms as Tokiya gently cradles him. For a moment, he thinks the redhead might wake up, but he doesn’t, instead burrowing into the warmth in his sleep. Tokiya’s hand rests on Otoya’s slim waist, his other hand propping his own head up so that he can look at the sleeping boy. 

When the timer goes off again, Otoya doesn’t even ask what’s going on, just rests his head back against Tokiya’s chest and holds onto his shirt with clenched fists like he’s a small child afraid that Tokiya is going to leave.


	3. Hyper x Super x Lover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's bizarre to sing a song outside of STARISH's name, but when Reiji asks, Otoya always at least tries.
> 
> Tokiya worries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hyper x Super x Lover is one of the daily songs for Shining Live today, so let's post this chapter! I recommend listening to it before you read this, just so that you understand exactly what Tokiya means when he says it's obnoxious.
> 
> You'll see Haruka in this fic, but I feel like her relationship with Tokiya has to be a little strange, since her plotline with him was essentially:
> 
> Haruka: It's my dream to compose music for HAYATO.  
> Tokiya: Cool, I'm not HAYATO.  
> Haruka: Well, that's okay.  
> Tokiya: Psyche, I actually am HAYATO.  
> Haruka: Great! I can compose music for HAYATO!  
> Tokiya: But I actually don't want to be HAYATO anymore.  
> Haruka: Okay . . . But since you're not HAYATO anymore. . . I have these other five boys also want me to make music for them. You should join them.  
> Tokiya: ????????????????
> 
> I have nothing against Haruka, but the way that the anime was set up didn't exactly make sense for their development. So, I'm going to make them awkward.
> 
> Not as much fluff in this one because lighter fluid gets dumped on that slow burn in the next chapter, and because this is a coming-of-age fic as much as it is a romance.

The incident has impacted their relationship for the worse. It’s fine when Otoya is asleep or not moving, but Tokiya is now hyperaware of his safety, and, as he realizes this is an odd thing, resolves to spend as much time away from him as possible.

Haruka is the only one to call him on it. They aren’t as close as they were in their first year; Tokiya feels guilty about essentially using her in order to get further away from his HAYATO career and there’s not as much need for them to interact one-on-one now that STARISH is a thing. She’s no longer their only composer and the others seem excited enough to talk to her.

But he does still see her when they’re all together, and she asks if she can talk to him after a group jam session.

“It looks like something’s wrong between you and Ittoki-kun, so I was wondering if there was anything I could do to help.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he says quickly. If she knew the real reason behind his previous injury, she probably could have guessed—she’s not dumb—but Otoya had told everyone that he was just being clumsy and fell before he could tell everyone what actually happened. 

“I think he thinks something’s wrong then. He’s been weird the last couple of days. Maybe you could talk to him?”

He’s not going to, but he knows someone who will. “Yeah, I’ll figure out what’s going on,” he tells her and she smiles up at him.

“Thank you!”

Tomochika calls her over then and she quickly bids him farewell.

He stares at Otoya, trying to figure out what’s wrong with his friend. Now that Haruka says it, he realizes she’s right; he’s faking it well, but he’s missing some of the authenticity behind the normal bluster. He can see it when Otoya says he can do something, like there’s a part of him that’s not sure if he can, and that’s a problem. 

Otoya is hands down the leader of STARISH, even if it’s never been said out loud. They can’t operate without him; he’s the glue that holds them together, which means he can’t doubt himself.

When he tells Reiji this over bento boxes, his mentor merely nods. “I was actually going to ask you if you wouldn’t mind me asking Otoyan on my newest single. My partner dropped out, and it’s up Otoyan’s alley. I’m more than happy to let you listen to it, in case you’d like to participate instead, but—”

Anything that Reiji says is up Otoya’s alley is definitely not up Tokiya’s. “It’s fine with me.”

“I figure this might instill some more confidence in him; optimism won’t take him all the way.” Reiji pauses to take a bite of an octopus sausage. “I’d also like you guys to do something for me.”

“What?” The fact that Reiji has brought it up to Tokiya alone is a sign that he’s not going to like it, and that makes him wary.

“Take some time for a break. Together. You both have been working too hard, and your duet finals are coming up soon enough. The bonding will help that.”

Just the idea of taking a break seems bad, but bonding with Otoya while Tokiya is still terrified of killing Otoya on accident is not on his list of things to do for fun. “Maybe later. Ai-sempai has asked me to help Syo-kun on his vocal range.”

“Ai-ai can do his own work.”

“It’s still not good timing. And if we have the duet finals soon, we should get a head start on them.”

“Just a weekend?”

“No.”

Otoya comes in then, obviously having finished his vocal lesson, and like normal, Reiji waves him over. Reiji’s mother gives him a curry bento without him having to ask and presses a quick kiss to the top of his head before she leaves. When Otoya had been bandaged up from his concussion, she’d went from professional to motherly very quickly, and much like with everyone else who had tried to fuss over him, he’d seemed uncomfortable with the attention.

“I’m taking you both to a theme park this weekend. You’ve earned it; it’s time for us all to take some time off!” Reiji announces, and they both look at him, surprised.

“Are you sure?” Otoya asks.

“Of course!”

This is obviously another one of Reiji’s schemes, and the fact that Tokiya has literally _just_ said no to him does not improve his mood. “I have a script to memorize,” he says, even though he definitely does not.

“We can help you memorize it on the way there!” Otoya says, already excited about this idea. “Like, after every ride, we’ll quiz you!”

“That’s a great idea, Otoyan!”

Short of faking sick that day, he can already see he’s not getting out of this. Otoya and Reiji are both forces of nature apart, so together they’re unstoppable. “Fine,” he grumbles.

Otoya and Reiji both cheer. 

“Oh, Otoyan! I have a favor to ask of you! Consider this how you can pay me back for the theme park!” Reiji clasps his hands in front of his face in a prayer position, looking at Otoya with a pleading expression. “I have a track I need you to help me on with vocals.”

“Me?” Otoya’s spoon drops and his hesitation is clear on his face for just a moment until he covers it up. “For a vocal track? Why not Tokiya-kun?”

“It’s got your kind of feel! You’d be perfect on it. Come on, help me out?”

“Um . . .” Otoya looks down, and then at Reiji, and back down again. “Yeah, if you’re sure.”

Reiji cheers.

 

Hyper x Super x Lover is _definitely_ not Tokiya’s kind of song. In fact, if he hadn’t been told by the recording tech that Reiji actually did have someone else already planned on the song, he would have assumed it was written specifically for Otoya. It’s fast-paced and frantic and utterly obnoxious in every way. 

The most obnoxious part is how it gets stuck in his head every time Otoya practices the vocals in the apartment.

On the day of the recording, which is a quick two days turnaround later, the atmosphere is tense. Not because of Reiji (in fact, if Reiji was any more laid-back, he’d be a puddle on the floor), but Otoya’s nerves have very obviously gotten the better of him. Tokiya supposes he can understand; performing with STARISH is being part of a group, but this is Otoya’s name on it, not STARISH.

That’s still no excuse for how he struggles down a piece of toast and then tries to cover up the sound of himself throwing it back up fifteen minutes later.

Hilariously, this is the most nervous Tokiya’s ever seen Otoya. Not for auditions, not for their coup against the headmaster, not even for their debut as STARISH in front of millions of people. No, it’s just going to be him, Reiji, a microphone, and a couple of people in the recording booth, and that’s got him so sick that it almost seems like he’s going to have to back out of it entirely.

“You should be excited! My little kouhai is growing up! I’m so proud!” Reiji says excitedly. Otoya struggles to paste a smile on his face and it turns out more of a grimace.

“Calm down,” Tokiya tells him, although he doesn’t mean for it to sound as cold as it does. 

“Right. I can do this.” Otoya tugs on the strings of his hooded sweatshirt, and Tokiya can see it cinch up in the back because he’s pulled too hard.

It’s not much better when they get into the recording booth. The sound tech is there, as well as Haruka and Tomochika, much to Tokiya’s surprise. 

“Otoya-kun came to my last recording, so I wanted to support him in his,” Tomochika explains. Haruka says something about how nervous she expects Otoya to be and hoped she could help somehow.

The sound check starts, and once the microphones are adjusted, it’s time for the vocals. They’ll be singing in the same room in order to assist their harmonization, which brings its own set of issues, but they’re irrelevant when Otoya’s voice cracks on the first line of their first attempt.

They need to calm him down. He’s too nervous, and it’s making his voice tight. 

“Do you want to try cheering him on or something?” the sound tech asks when Tokiya says so.

“Can we talk to him?” Haruka asks.

The tech points out the speaker button, and as Reiji tries to diffuse the nervous energy in the sound booth, Tomochika presses the button. “There’s no need to be nervous, Otoya-kun! I know it’s scary in there on your own, but you’ve got Kotobuki-san there to back you up, right? Just pretend you’re singing together at home!”

Tokiya figures that the tech would prefer they not do that, seeing as Reiji and Otoya had almost broken the coffee table yesterday in an overenthusiastic rendition of the song. But, of course, that had been before Otoya’s nerves had settled in.

“We’re all in here cheering for you!” Haruka says. “Don’t think about them, think about singing to us!”

Tokiya debates whether or not to say something and after a quick bit of consideration, he presses the button. “Take a deep breath. You can do it.”

Despite the fact that Tokiya’s reassurance is the least verbose and probably the least helpful, Otoya brightens the most at it, although he’s still a few shades short of a healthy pallor. “Do you really think so?” he asks in a small voice.

“If you sing it like you did yesterday, yeah.” He supposes this is what Reiji meant by optimism failing Otoya. “Lots of air,” he advises, which sounds weird, but Otoya has a habit of falling flat when he runs out of breath.

“Ready to give it another go?” Reiji asks with a giant smile on his face. His eyes are smiling too, even when he looks back at Tokiya in the recording booth. “You can’t make anyone smile if you don’t sing the song, right?”

Otoya smiles a real smile, the first he’s done this morning. “Right. Let’s do this, Rei-chan!” he cheers, obviously revived.

“That’s the spirit! Give us the signal, tech!”

They make it through the second take with no problems. Tokiya lets out the breath he doesn’t realize he’s been holding as he grasps they may have just wrapped the song up in two takes, which is almost unheard of for a rookie like Otoya, but Reiji insists on one more. “For good luck,” he says, and all of them nod. The third take is always the best; it’s superstition, but it’s true.

The third take looks like a lot more fun from the outside. Otoya and Reiji dance as they sing, having a blast as they record what sounds like the most energetic song Tokiya’s ever heard. The second take was good, but this one has a life to it that the other didn’t. It’s like listening to sunlight, and even Tokiya can’t help but suppress a grin and tap his foot as they record.

“It sounds so good!” Tomochika says in awe, and he and Haruka nod in agreement.

The song wraps up and the tech gives them the all clear to exit the room. Both singers start laughing as Reiji throws his arm around Otoya’s shoulders.

“That was amazing!” Haruka says as they enter the recording booth. Otoya has a huge smile on his face and gives Tomochika a hug when she throws herself at him in excitement, squealing.

“Nerves are no match for us!” Reiji announces proudly. 

“You did good,” Tokiya says. 

Even though it was a fairly mediocre compliment, Otoya lights up like he’d just told him Christmas had come early. “Really?”

Is this the first compliment he’s ever paid his roommate or something? Tokiya quickly pushes that thought aside, since he’s fairly sure the answer is yes. “Really.”

“Can we listen to it?” Reiji asks, and the tech waves them both over to put on the headphones at the booth before he replays it.

The awe on Otoya’s face is incredible. It feels a bit like looking directly into the sun as he turns to look at Tokiya. “Is this really me?” 

Tokiya nods, trying to keep the smile off of his face. 

The song obviously ends on the headphones, because Reiji throws them off, moves Otoya’s out of the way, and lifts the kid up as they both celebrate. Tokiya squawks, trying to get him to put Otoya down before they bash his head into something else, while Tomochika and Haruka laugh and watch. Eventually, Reiji hands Otoya off to him, and Otoya’s hands feel so warm as they rest on his shoulders, Tokiya can feel them through his jacket. 

“We have practice,” he reminds the redhead, and Otoya checks his watch before making his own squawking noises, apologizing to the others before dragging Tokiya out of the room before they’re late. Still, the wide smile stays on his face, and Tokiya can’t help but feel it should stay that way.


	4. BELIEVE☆MY VOICE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roller coasters and Tokiya Ichinose don't mix well. Or, the chapter in which Reiji makes a badly-timed phone call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate summary: the chapter where Tokiya contemplates drowning himself in a public toilet.
> 
> Here is the dumpster fire that is the slow burn (don't get too excited, Tokiya hasn't managed to overthink it yet by the end of the chapter). 
> 
> If you're wondering about the STARISH releases talked about in this chapter, this would be the ones on the Audition Songs albums, so:  
> Otoya: TRUST☆MY DREAM  
> Tokiya: BELIEVE☆MY VOICE  
> Masato: Knight no Kiss wa Yuki yori Yasashiku (A Knight's Kiss is More Gentle than Snow)  
> Ren: Akuma no Kiss wa Honoo yori Hageshiku (A Devil's Kiss is More Intense than Flames)  
> ((Who let these two name songs?????)  
> Natsuki: Southern Cross Waltz  
> Syo: Oresama Rondo  
> Don't ask me about Cecil; idk either.
> 
> Even though Tokiya disparages it, BELIEVE☆MY VOICE is one of my favorites of this series, second only to Southern Cross Waltz, because serious Natsuki is A+++++, my dudes.

Hyper x Super x Lover comes out a day later, which is a ridiculously short turnaround time. Tokiya has a sneaking suspicion Reiji has something to do with that, but he just wears that same sickeningly sweet smile.

It debuts at #1 on the charts. 

A #1 hit is a big thing at Shining Agency, and the fact that Otoya Ittoki is a relatively unknown name is huge to the press. By Friday, there’s already a newspaper article out that states that Otoya Ittoki is set to become the new Reiji Kotobuki, which Tokiya believes is an insult to both of them but is obviously meant to be praise. Reiji’s music is hyper and loud, but clever, with puns and wordplay and dozens of things that could make anyone’s head spin. Otoya’s is genuine and authentic, and it seems that the academy has the same idea when they suggest STARISH release songs from while they were enrolled in Saotome Academy. The idea is distasteful, since it’s from the beginning of their journey, but it’s better than scrambling to make new singles, Tokiya supposes.

He’s still not thrilled about the idea. It’s better than the song he submitted for his finals, which was criticized as being inauthentic and cheesy, but not by much. It still has tired imagery and words he wishes he could swap out for others, but BELIEVE☆MY VOICE is going to be released no matter what he says apparently.

It’s on that note, with his two roommates on a high after their fantastic single and his own disgruntlement over the new release, that they leave for the theme park on Saturday. The only reason Tokiya hasn’t ducked out is because Reiji hasn’t, which he thought he might if he’s hoping for Tokiya and Otoya to spend some time bonding.

Reiji drives and they have a small karaoke session in the car despite Tokiya’s grumbling. He does enjoy it, even though he pretends that he doesn’t because it’s childish. When one of Quartet Night’s songs come on the radio, they take turns singing parts, and Reiji assigns him Ai’s part as well as Camus’s because of his falsetto. For his part, Otoya makes a precocious Ranmaru, and Reiji jokes he’ll have to tell the hard rocker they’ve replaced him. Tokiya snickers and covers the sound up with a cough.

The theme park itself is a bit of a forbidden treat, apparently to both him and Otoya, because the redhead stands in front of it with his mouth hanging open. “Haven’t you ever been to one of these?” Reiji asks.

Tokiya has, although it was when he was a kid, but Otoya shakes his head, which thrills Reiji to no end. “Then let’s go in!” he says, tossing Otoya his hat.

They’ve got their disguises on, although it’s not particularly hard to tell who they are. Otoya’s hair is only somewhat covered up by the tweed pageboy cap he has on, and Tokiya’s fairly sure that slapping on a pair of sunglasses hasn’t really changed any of their faces too much. It does look a little weird to see his mentor without his distinctive hat though. Still, security doesn’t stop them, and Reiji flashes a Shining Agency badge that allows them to keep their stuff on through the checkpoint. 

Reiji takes them on a few smaller rides first, to gauge how motion sick they get. Tokiya feels minor twinges, but Otoya is seemingly unaffected, which doesn’t really surprise him. They get soaked on a water ride, and later, on a larger roller coaster, Tokiya barely grabs Otoya’s hat before it flies away in a move that makes him appreciate his long limbs. He supposes he can give them a break during dance practice, when they feel like giant, unbending toothpicks.

Despite himself, Tokiya is having fun. Reiji and Otoya are both playing off each other for their enthusiasm, which is wearing him out, but he can’t help but grin as they pull him towards the next ride. It’s not until they hit one of the larger roller coasters, but not the biggest in the park, that Tokiya’s motion sickness kicks in, and he finds himself dry heaving when they get off the ride. Otoya runs to get him a bottle of water while Reiji makes him sit with his head between his knees. 

“No more big ones for you!” he says as he smooths Tokiya’s hair back with a gesture that is undoubtedly meant to be familial. Tokiya swats him away, but he misses, since he’s more concerned on making sure he doesn’t throw up.

Otoya jogs back with the bottle of water, and Tokiya takes two sips before pressing it to the back of his neck. The cold makes the nausea abate slightly, but not enough to keep his stomach from flipflopping. He presses his chilled fingertips to his forehead and Otoya fans him with a hand fan at a frantic pace.

Reiji has apparently decided now is a good time to take a phone call, since he’s a few steps away, chatting on his phone, much to Tokiya’s irritation. After a moment, he comes back with a chagrined look. “I need to call the Quartet Night boys really quick. Think you’ve got this under control?” he asks them.

Tokiya hopes his stare is enough to send Reiji into hell (or at least mortal pain), but Otoya nods. “Yeah, I’ll make sure Tokiya-kun is okay.”

Reiji ruffles Otoya’s hair, points at Tokiya to communicate a message that is obviously lost in translation because Tokiya has no idea what it means, and walks away.

Otoya seats himself next to Tokiya and rummages through his bag before coming up with a cough drop. “Here, try this,” he says, and Tokiya looks at it distrustfully before remembering that this is Otoya and he doesn’t have a deceptive bone in his body. The taste of apple floods his mouth, and for a moment, he thinks it’s going to make him really throw up, but after the initial panic, it cleans out the taste of stomach acid, which does help.

“Thanks,” he says, taking another swig of water.

Otoya just nods.

After a few more minutes, the sensation subsides enough for him to be able to stand, and they hobble over to a bathroom together so that Tokiya can compose himself. Otoya leans against the far wall, watching for any signs of weakness. He asks Tokiya a question about birds that is very clearly meant to be a distraction, and Tokiya talks about how bird wingspans are measured as he washes his face of lingering sweat. 

Of course, when they exit the bathroom, Tokiya still blathering on about wing feathers, Otoya pauses, looking to their right, and Tokiya sees Haruka and Tomochika waving at them. At least they weren’t there a few minutes before, he muses.

“Ichinose-kun! Otoya-kun!” Haruka says excitedly. 

“How’d you recognize us?” Otoya asks with a grin.

Tomochika tosses her hair behind her shoulder and winks from behind her own sunglasses. “We’re so incognito here, but we can all still recognize each other. Although, thanks for the hat, Otoya-kun,” she says, and Tokiya realizes with a jolt that the hat on her head is indeed one of Otoya’s; he’d recognize the hat he picked up off the floor a million times. “It really is comfortable!”

“I thought it might be best for your hair,” he replies, and there’s something about the way that they look at each other that makes Tokiya feel ill again. “It’s a little big for me, but you have a lot more hair to pin up.”

Haruka, who is the only one not in a half-assed costume, smiles at them. “I’m surprised to see you both here. You’ve been working so hard.”

“It was a gift from Kotobuki-san,” Tokiya replies stiffly.

“That’s so not fair! My mentor wouldn’t take me anywhere even if I begged her,” Tomochika says.

“Rei-chan is a really awesome mentor,” Otoya says with a smile. “He’s really incredible.”

“He’s ridiculous,” Tokiya says with a snort. 

“Are you feeling alright, Ichinose-kun?” Haruka asks, suddenly peering up at him.

He waves her off. “Just a bit of motion sickness.”

"You too?”

He can definitely empathize with her miserable expression.

Tomochika looks over at Otoya. “You don’t have it, right?” she asks.

He shakes his head. 

“No chance you want to go with me on the Death Coaster then? Haruka-chan won’t go with me!”

Just the name of the Death Coaster is enough to make Tokiya feel ill again, and then he realizes she’s tugging on Otoya’s sleeve and smiling up at him, and there’s something uncomfortable rising in Tokiya’s chest at the sight. He wants to leave all of a sudden or maybe actually throw up; he’s not sure which. 

“I’ve already promised Rei-chan I’d go with him. Sorry, Tomo-chan!” Otoya says with a chagrined laugh before turning back to Tokiya. “Are you feeling alright?” he asks, suddenly concerned.

“You look pale,” Haruka says.

He wants out of this situation _now_ , so he shakes his head and flees back to the restroom. He can hear Otoya shout after him, but he shuts himself in a stall, trying to figure out what his problem is. Nothing’s _happening_ , but he feels anger and irritation, and he has no idea what the hell is going on with himself. 

There’s a knock on the stall door. “Tokiya-kun?” Otoya asks.

“How did you know this was the one I was in?” 

There’s a pause, and then Otoya says, “this is the only closed door. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course.” He slaps his cheeks, trying to snap himself out of whatever funk he’s in. His hand closes around the handle of the stall door, and he opens it to find Otoya standing right in front of it, looking confused and worried.

He has a momentary lapse of judgment, or at least that’s what he tells himself later. He grabs Otoya’s wrist impulsively, yanking him into the stall and shutting the door behind him. Otoya yelps, and Tokiya presses him up against the corner of the stall before his lips press to the redhead’s so possessively he’s not entirely sure he’s in his right mind. There is nothing logical about this moment, and once his brain catches up, it puts the brakes on immediately, since Otoya is stiff as a board and unresponsive.

Shit, what is he _doing_?

He’s about to pull away and try to drown himself in the toilet or something that might make this moment go away, and then Otoya’s head tilts slightly to the left. Lips tentatively move against his, and Tokiya coaxes more action by angling his head slightly too. The kiss is gentle but heats up quickly, and once Otoya becomes fully responsive, Tokiya scrapes his teeth over his bottom lip. 

After a minute, they separate, staring at each other. Otoya, for his part, looks a little stunned still, but he’s an absolute vision with reddened, kiss-bruised lips. He opens his mouth, but he doesn’t really move it, so all that comes out is a tiny whimper, and that’s enough to ignite Tokiya into action, cradling Otoya’s head between his hands before slotting their mouths together again, this time taking advantage of the slight part between Otoya’s lips to slip his tongue through. Tokiya still isn’t completely sure what he’s doing, but his entire body is singing, and Otoya isn’t pulling away. He presses the redhead back into the corner with most of his weight, and Otoya clutches at his jacket lapels to pull him even closer. Their tongues slide against each other, and Tokiya manages to elicit a sound from his roommate that makes him want to do the same motion a million times if it will create the same reaction.

This time, they are interrupted by the sound of Hyper x Super x Lover coming from Otoya’s pocket, and while Tokiya wants to ignore it, he knows that ringtone signifies a call from Reiji. The last thing he wants is for his mentor to walk in on this. He doesn’t even know what it is, let alone how to explain it.

He pulls back regretfully, and Otoya sucks in a shaking breath before picking up the line. “Rei-chan,” he says in greeting before listening to Reiji chatter on at the other end. “Ah, sorry! We took a walk; we’ll come meet you there! We’re close!”

What shitty timing on that phone call, Tokiya thinks before it hits him that he just made out with his roommate and best friend in a bathroom stall. Even worse, he still doesn’t have an explanation to give him. They stare at each other for a moment before Otoya seems to understand. “Come on,” he says. “Rei-chan is waiting for us.” He unlocks the stall door so that they can exit, and Tokiya makes sure to put a hand on his elbow as a silent promise that he’ll explain when he can figure it out.

Otoya nods in response.


	5. TRUST☆MY DREAM

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The idol business doesn't always go smoothly, and STARISH is having some growing pains trying to figure out where they're meant to fit in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For once, it's Otoya overthinking rather than Tokiya. What a nice change.
> 
> Also, I love Otoya, so every time I make him cry, I feel bad. :(
> 
> For anyone's curiosity, the songs released in this chapter are the Happy Love Songs album and one from Cecil because otherwise, he's just not going to sing this entire fic.
> 
> Otoya: Niji Iro Overdrive  
> Tokiya: Hoshikuzu - Shall We Dance  
> Masato: Blue x Prism Heart  
> Ren: Red Hot x Love Minds  
> Natsuki: Andromeda de Kuchizuke wo  
> Syo: Cosmic Runner  
> Cecil: Ai to Yume to Anata to
> 
> All of the criticisms I level at them are totally not my opinion aside from Tokiya's super saccharine, HAYATO-sounding monstrosity that constantly gets stuck in my head as soon as I hear the first line.
> 
> Also, if you don't see the Brooklyn Nine-Nine scene with Peralta throwing himself at Terry after saying Terry will always catch him whenever Otoya throws himself at Tokiya, you should look up the scene, because that will forever be immortalized to you now.

They don’t talk about the kiss in the bathroom at all. 

Tokiya knows it’s his fault, because he’s still totally lost as to how his self-control crumbled enough to throw himself at his roommate like that, but he doesn’t know what to say. He knows it has something to do with Otoya, and it almost feels a bit like when they had debuted and Tokiya had lost his senses for a moment, but since he still can’t explain that one either, he doesn’t explain anything at all.

For his part, Otoya doesn’t ask. He does become more physical again though, which he hasn’t done since STARISH had officially formed and they had a long conversation about boundaries. It starts with a late night where he is obviously bored and Tokiya is taking the rare quiet from Reiji’s absence to read some poetry he had received as a gift from Masato for Christmas. There is no warning before Otoya launches himself from the opposite side of the couch where he had been picking at his guitar absently to where Tokiya is sitting, minding his own business. 

The book flops to the floor as Tokiya gives out a surprised cry and tries to fend Otoya off. The redhead’s hands are locked around his wrists though, and it’s not going particularly well. “What are you doing?” he snaps when Otoya finally manages to pin him against the couch. 

“I wanted to see who was stronger. And it looks like I am.” There is only the hint of haughtiness and the issued dare with cocked eyebrows, but Tokiya can already feel his pride raising its hackles at the implication. Still, he doesn’t say anything, and Otoya pulls away, the slightest hint of disappointment in his expression before he gets up to stash his guitar back in their shared room.

Tokiya shouldn’t do it. He knows he shouldn’t; it’s stupid, and someone could get hurt. He can still remember Otoya’s head bouncing off the end table. But if neither of them is near anything . . . 

“Did you leave the stereo remote between the couch cushions again?” he asks, picking his book back up from the floor. “I can’t find it.”

Otoya’s eyebrows furrow as he reenters the room. “I don’t think I did . . but Rei-chan was the last to listen to it. I wonder if he did.” He walks over to check, and that’s when Tokiya discards his book on the end table and throws himself at Otoya’s back. Just as he expected, Otoya lets out a cry as he flumps on the couch, but he turns himself over in a surprisingly lithe move and they wrestle for dominance on the cushions. 

“Looks . . . like I’m . . . stronger,” Tokiya grunts between fending off attacks from the throw pillow Otoya has grabbed. One of the attacks hits his face and he recoils backwards, Otoya’s hands guiding him back against the couch rather than over the edge. 

“Ha! I win!” Otoya cheers before Tokiya takes the other pillow and retaliates. For a moment, they’re just hitting each other with the pillows, and the entire situation is just so funny he can’t help but laugh. Otoya freezes, looking at him in surprise, and when Tokiya stares at him, he just says, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you actually laugh!” He gets a pillow to the face for that, which makes him squeal. “That was uncalled for!”

“Well, stop focusing on stupid things,” Tokiya says.

They fight for a little longer before retreating to opposite sides of the couch and laughing. Tokiya can’t remember the last time he laughed this hard, but it definitely hasn’t been since he joined the academy. “Okay, what was that _actually_ about?” he asks Otoya, figuring he’s got to have a real explanation for it.

“You worry too much.” Otoya punctuates this by throwing his pillow at Tokiya and then freezing when Tokiya actually catches it instead of deflecting it. “No chance you want to give that back?”

Tokiya smirks. “Nope,” he says before launching a full offensive. Otoya shrieks, hiding his head under his hands until he manages to grab the fabric of one of the pillows. Rather than having it rip, Tokiya lets go of it, and the fight is once again equal. 

They don’t stop until Reiji walks through the door, looking at both of them with raised eyebrows and a bag of groceries in his arms. “Okay, kiddos, playtime is over. I bought dinner,” he says with his normal grin on his face, although he winks at Tokiya when Otoya leaves the room to wash up. “Pillow fights, huh? You know, you can do more childish things with me too, Tokki.”

Tokiya ignores his tone and tries to smooth down his now-ruffled hair. “He started it,” he says petulantly.

Reiji laughs at that like it’s the funniest thing he’s heard all week and ushers him into the bathroom to wash up with Otoya. The redhead moves over to make space for Tokiya, and then bumps him lightly with his hip, causing them both to start chuckling again.

 

Wrestling isn’t the only thing they do now; Otoya is getting fairly good at launching himself at Tokiya, and at this point, the older of them just takes it, bracing himself to catch Otoya, lest they both fall backwards like they did the first time he wasn’t expecting it. He grumbles, Otoya calls him grumpy, and it gets added to the list of weird things about their relationship. 

Now that their audition songs have been released and the studio has gauged the reaction, each of the members of STARISH is asked to create another solo song for a love song album. Haruka promises to help all of them, and she does, once their lyrics are written. Tokiya wishes it was for anything other than a love song album. The lyrics he’s come up with are cheesy and sound more like HAYATO than almost anything else he’s written, but he’s stuck once he takes them to Haruka to make a track to. Otoya struggles writing lyrics, but once again, they’re the most authentic of the group, even if the song doesn’t necessarily sound too much like the traditional love song from the outside. 

Tokiya’s Hoshikuzu - Shall We Dance debuts at #5, in front of Syo and Cecil’s songs, but not by too much. Ren and Masato take the #1 and #2 spots respectively, which isn’t a surprise because their family names will sell albums at least at first, but Otoya’s Niji Iro Overdrive is #3 without hugely overt lyrics like “my princess” or “my girl” or any of the cheese that permeates the rest of their songs. 

The killer is the critical reception. Tokiya is praised for an exceptional range but is derided for having inauthentic, saccharine lyrics. Ren’s instrumental is given a scathing review, whereas Masato is told that he had played it safe with an inconspicuous track, which is not particularly great feedback for anyone involved in it. Otoya’s range is criticized as being small but the track feels “refreshingly real and down-to-earth, even if it is immature”. Natsuki’s track is apparently too intense for a love song, but his vocals are strong and well-timed. Syo is just criticized in general with a harsh review that has the rest of them hiding any further reviews from the shortest member of their group. And no one looks at Cecil’s review because Cecil requests they don’t; he is more concerned with the content of his music than his reviews. Tokiya has the feeling that he knows what it says thanks to Camus, because he comes into practice the next day with far more muted energy than normal. 

So, morale is fairly low. Luckily, this is what their mentors are good for, and Reiji makes sure to remind them that the people who write said reviews know nothing of the process or the hard work they had poured into the tracks before assigning them more work to resolve some of the issues. Otoya is given _more_ vocal lessons on top of the ones he already has and Tokiya is given songwriting exercises every two days. 

In short, it sucks. And now they’re all so worried about their product that their group performance is suffering. Duet finals are coming up still, and Tokiya and Otoya haven’t even talked about it, let alone prepared anything for it. They’re working so hard on everything else that Tokiya doesn’t even scold Otoya when he finds him asleep on the floor on top of his textbook; he just pulls a blanket over him and goes back to work on his own writing exercises.

Still, nothing he writes seems to be good enough. Even when he opens himself up like Reiji suggests, the only things there are dust and empty promises. There’s nothing for him to offer an audience, and the realization shakes him.

He goes to a practice room to try to sing off some of his nerves when he hears Otoya practicing in another one with Cecil. The vocals are going fine until his high note cracks and there’s the sound of coughing. Tokiya has no doubt this is Otoya; his roommate has been doing this constantly since his range was criticized after their singles released. He knocks and enters without waiting for a response.

“Toki-kun!” Cecil greets him, and Otoya gives him a weary wave. It’s obvious that he’s exhausted, but he also seems to be disheartened, which is not a good look on Otoya. 

“I heard your note crack again,” he says.

Otoya flinches. “Yeah. I’m not sure I’m getting any better,” he says as if he’s joking, but there’s a look in his eyes like he’s not.

“Let me see,” he says, turning the music stand in front of his roommate around so he can take a look at the note. The song clearly isn’t written for Otoya because the high C is difficult for Tokiya to reach, let alone the redhead. “Is this yours?” he asks Cecil, who has the highest range of all of them.

He nods. “It’s one of the songs Camyu and I are working on.”

Tokiya takes the sheet music off the stand and shoves it at him. “I’ll take over. Go.”

Obviously lost, Cecil looks between the two of them, but shrugs anyways. “Okay. See you, Otoya! Toki-kun,” he says before bowing and exiting the room.

Tokiya turns his attention back to Otoya. “You might want to start with the stuff you can actually achieve first,” he reproaches. 

“I didn’t want to take away from his practice time.”

“Take a break and get some water. I’ll meet you back here in a minute,” he says before jogging over to the sheet music room. It takes him a minute to find what he’s looking for, but he finds it quickly enough and returns to find Otoya playing with the cap of his water bottle. “Have you warmed up?”

Otoya nods.

Tokiya closes the door behind himself and shuts the blinds so that they don’t have an audience. Then he puts the sheet music for TRUST MY DREAM on the stand and turns it around so that Otoya can see it. The redhead is obviously confused and opens his mouth to say something, but Tokiya cuts him off. “Just sing it for me. Humor me.”

He doesn’t even make it through the first line before his voice cracks at the high notes. Otoya’s face falls as he stares at the sheet music in disbelief. “I didn’t actually think I was getting worse,” he says, crestfallen.

“You’re not.” Tokiya takes the sheet music back, putting it on the stand in front of himself. “Sing it with me this time. You’ll have to be patient with me; I’ve listened to it before but I don’t have it memorized.”

“But my voice is just going to crack again,” Otoya points out.

“Then jump back in when it’s recovered. Ready?” Tokiya counts off and starts the song. It’s a weird feeling for him to be singing Otoya’s song, and Otoya’s voice does indeed crack on the first line again, but he jumps back in at the second. Tokiya waves his finger before pointing at himself in a signal to look at him. 

The fifth line, which has the same note pattern as the first line, goes perfectly. No cracks. Otoya’s voice is quiet, but he keeps looking at Tokiya, and while the eye contact is a bit uncomfortable, Tokiya doesn’t look away. 

The chorus, with the highest notes in the song, sound effortless.

Tokiya breaks off after the first verse and chorus, closing his raised fist to signal an end. “See? You’re not getting worse.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You’re thinking too much. You’re worried about not hitting the notes, so you don’t. When you couldn’t see how high the notes were, you did fine.” Tokiya shoves his hands in his pockets, satisfied that he is correct. “Your range will expand naturally if you work it. It’s just like stretching a muscle.”

“So, I’m just not supposed to use sheet music for the rest of my life?” Otoya asks. “Somehow I don’t think that’s going to work, Tokiya-kun.”

“No, you’d be fine if you had some confidence that you were going to hit the notes.” He digs around in his bag before pulling out his own sheet music. “Do you have your sheet for Rainbow Dream?”

Otoya nods and retrieves it from his backpack. “I can’t hit the notes on this either,” he warns Tokiya, who waits until he’s back in position in front of the music stand before reaching over to flick him on the forehead. “Ow! What was that for?”

“You can hit those notes. Trust me. Don’t look at the music unless you need to.”

He counts off again and Otoya stares at him deeply as they sing together. Tokiya can hear the moment Otoya tenses up to try to hit a higher note and snaps his fingers to bring the attention back. The note warbles a little with surprise but comes out just fine. Tokiya nods his approval, not stopping there. 

It doesn’t surprise him much when he doesn’t have to help Otoya for the rest of the song; he regains confidence fairly quickly once he proves to himself he can. 

“Told you.”

“Tokiya . . . thanks.”

It doesn’t even bother him that Otoya drops the honorific. “You’re doing fine. I don’t know what’s gotten into your head, but you’ve got to get it out.” He rounds the music stands to try to peer under Otoya’s bangs, because they’re hiding his eyes, and the easiest thing to read on Otoya is his eyes.

“Am I holding STARISH back?”

Well, that’s an unexpected question. Tokiya physically recoils, trying to figure out where it came from. “No. We’ve still all got a lot to learn, that’s all. That’s why we have our mentors, right? Kotobuki-san and the others? It’s not just you, Otoya,” he admits when the redhead doesn’t look up. The reciprocated lack of honorific gets him to meet Tokiya’s eyes. They’re filled with tears, and his mouth is quivering. Tokiya sighs but the sound lacks irritation. 

Otoya wraps his arms around Tokiya’s chest and buries his head in his shoulder. Were it for any other reason, Tokiya probably would have pushed him away, but he can feel the palpable tension that begins to fall away from the redhead’s shoulders. Obviously, he’s been thinking about this a lot, and Tokiya can empathize with having fears that interfere with work. Tokiya reciprocates the embrace and a warm feeling steals across his chest as they hold each other. He rests his head against the side of Otoya’s as he takes comfort in having someone with him that understands his recent fears and frustrations. It’s not like he hasn’t thought he might be holding the others back, but he didn’t take it to heart like Otoya has. 

After a few minutes of this, Otoya pulls back and wipes his eyes with his sleeve. “Sorry.”

“We’re a team. You, me, and Kotobuki-san.” He now understands the little groups they’re in because while Reiji is a good mentor, he’s still a mentor. He can’t feel the pressure that they’re under right now. “You can come to me when you start worrying about this stuff.”

Otoya smiles, although it’s still a little tearful, and then leans forward to peck Tokiya on the cheek. It’s unexpected, but not at all unpleasant, Tokiya thinks as his heart constricts. “Thanks. And you too! I’m not really sure what I can help you with, but if there’s anything . . .”

“Actually, there is.” As much as he’d like to ignore his own songwriting woes, it’s undoubtedly something that Otoya can help with. Otoya brightens, and they spend some time huddled over the music stand together, listening to recordings and talking about lyrics that come from the heart.


	6. R.O.T.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tokiya and Otoya are stressed beyond comparison because of their most recent song reviews. Reiji has noticed. What kind of mentor would let his kouhai suffer?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick trigger warning for anyone who has a thing about spiked drinks; it's only Reiji doing it here in a controlled environment, for pretty much the same reason you rub a baby's gums with whiskey when they're teething, and both Otoya and Tokiya understand it's happening. Still, if that bugs you, I probably would skip this chapter.
> 
> I didn't realize how much I love Reiji until I started writing him. We get to see so little of actual mentor-Reiji that he's coming off a little softer than in the show, but he cares.
> 
> Plus, I love the R.O.T. broship. I will live and die with this broship.
> 
> I've been trying to translate all of the foreign phrases in this fic, but I couldn't find a good word to substitute for kouhai that sounded decent in dialogue, so that's still in there. Also, if anyone wants to fight me on how I spelled sempai, bring it on; I have a Masters degree in Linguistics and am a native Japanese speaker. Come at me, bro.
> 
> EDIT 08/03/2018: Corrected Reiji's nicknames for Syo and Ren.

When they return to the dorm room that night, there’s a change in the furniture. The couches are pushed against opposite walls and there’s a small, blanketed table with pillows on the floor where the coffee table was previously. “Is that a kotatsu?” Tokiya asks in surprise.

Otoya doesn’t even wait to find out, diving under it. When he resurfaces on the other side, he lies flat on the floor with a satisfied sigh. “It’s so nice under here! Come on, Tokiya!”

The kotatsu is very alluring after walking out in the cool February air. Tokiya knows he should at least put away his bag and remove his blazer but seeing Otoya melting into a purring puddle at the warmth softens his resolve. With a small huff, he sits down and covers his legs with the blanket.

Otoya’s right; it’s like heaven under there. The heater thrums as it warms them, and Otoya worms his entire body under the covers so that only his head is outside. “Ahhhhhhh. Why haven’t we gotten one of these before?” he asks.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Tokiya warns, seeing the redhead’s eyelids already beginning to dip. “You’ll catch a cold, and I’m just going to leave you under there.”

“Leave me here to die,” Otoya says dramatically, turning his head in mock insult.

Reiji emerges from the bedroom then, smiling when he sees them. “Ah, you’ve found your present!”

That gets Otoya to scramble up to a sitting position. “Did you buy this, Rei-chan?”

He shakes his head and laughs. “My mother was afraid of you getting too cold during this winter, Otoyan,” he teases as he heats up a teapot on the stove. “It’s just an old one that was stored away, but it does make the apartment feel more like home, doesn’t it?”

“It’s nice,” Tokiya says, making sure to express his gratitude. 

“Anything for my two little kouhai,” he says with a wink, making them both flush and groan at the term of endearment. 

“We’ll have to make sure to thank your mother. She’s always doing such nice things for us,” Otoya says. With the number of times she’s just given them lunch rather than charged them for it, Tokiya agrees.

“You’re both part of the family now, hm?” Reiji says, shrugging it off. The teapot begins to whistle, and he takes it off the heat before pouring the contents into three mugs and bringing all of it to the table. “You two have been working hard recently, so I felt it was time for a break.”

Tokiya knows that’s code for their eyes now have dark circles and they’ve kept Reiji awake with their tossing and turning at night, but he doesn’t call him on it. “We shouldn’t take too long of one,” he says, remembering they still have their duet final to work on. He blows the steam from the rim of his cup and takes a drink, his eyebrows furrowing when there’s the harsh kickback of something on his tongue. “Is this spiked?”

“It just has a little bit of whiskey in it,” Reiji says as if it’s no big deal. “It helps to loosen up to write lyrics.”

Even with Otoya’s help earlier, his lyrics had ended up still sounding a little wooden, so on the miniscule chance Reiji is telling the truth, he’ll take it. It’s not like he’ll drink much of it, just enough to calm his nerves. He’s underage, after all.

Reiji asks about their day and Otoya explains the whole vocals issue, and Tokiya talks about how he’s worried he doesn’t have anything to offer for lyrics even though he had no previous intention to tell Reiji any of it. At this point, Otoya’s head is resting on the table and Tokiya feels like the knot in his chest is loosened for once. 

“I can’t write lyrics from my heart,” he says, taking another sip of tea before Reiji refills his cup. “There’s nothing there to write.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Otoya says, lifting his head to look at Tokiya. “You’re just so worried about how it sounds. Your lyrics always sound so elegant.” He drops his head back down.

“Elegance sounds inauthentic,” Tokiya grumbles.

“Sounds like you’re both having an overthinking problem,” Reiji says, scratching Otoya’s head like he’s a dog rather than an idol. 

“Yeah, but you can always have someone else write your songs,” Otoya says, pillowing his chin against his arms. His eyelids are drooped, but it’s more in frustration than fatigue. “No one wants an idol who can’t sing. Maybe I’m not cut out for this.”

Reiji slams his hand down on the table, making them both jump. “Oi. No one’s giving up in this room. Got it? So you got a few bad reviews; so what? You still got decent sales.”

“Curiosity,” Tokiya dismisses.

“Maybe some of them. But all of them? No way. Aren’t those fans the ones you want? Not some crotchety old song reviewer who expects operatic masterpieces? You’re here to sing for others because you want to help them, right?”

Tokiya has to admit that Reiji is right for once. Otoya nods, looking properly scolded, and Tokiya echoes the movement.

“Then pick yourselves up and throw everything into your next songs! You can’t give up now!” Obviously reassured that their resolve has been reignited, he takes off his hat and clutches it to his chest. “After all, you don’t want to see your sempai cry, do you?”

It’s clearly a joke, but Otoya panics and tries to comfort him while Tokiya just looks at him and wonders how such an airhead can be a decent mentor on occasion. Then again, airhead is a bad word for Reiji; he’s far more manipulative than that. 

Reiji wallows more, and eventually flops backwards onto the floor. “I’m going to just die of misery here,” he says, closing his eyes.

Tokiya knows that means he’s going to try to sleep there, and it’s late. “Come on, help me get him into bed,” he says to Otoya, rising. He’ll drag him in there if he has to. Or, at least, that’s the plan until he sways just standing still. His head is spinning, and Otoya’s obviously having the same issue. “How much alcohol was in there?” he asks.

“A bit,” Reiji says and holds out his hands for them to take. 

The resulting attempt is so pathetic that it sends Reiji into hysterics as they stumble against each other and then stumble the other way, trying to stay upright. He eventually stands up on his own, still chuckling as he helps Otoya take his jacket off. He seems completely sober, which is totally unfair. 

As they stagger into the bedroom, Tokiya realizes there’s no way they’re going to get Otoya into the top bunk, but Reiji pushes the redhead into the full-sized bed, which sends Tokiya on his other side sprawling across it too. “Kotobuki-san,” he protests, but Reiji is already covering the two of them with the blanket before he crawls in on Otoya’s other side. 

“Sleep tight,” he says, planting a kiss on both of their temples like they’re little kids.

Tokiya resolves to get into his own bed once Reiji falls asleep, but he closes his eyes as he waits and not even the unfamiliar feeling of Otoya’s side pressed against his can stop him from drifting off.

 

When Tokiya wakes, he’s warm. The first rays of sunlight are beginning to filter in, and he blinks blearily, trying to figure out what’s going on. His head hurts, and he is wrapped around Otoya’s slumbering form, which should send him upwards in embarrassment, especially when he realizes Reiji is smiling at him, but his mentor simply shakes his head and smooths some of Tokiya’s hair from his face. “Go back to sleep. It’s still early,” he says, and the way Tokiya’s eyes ache means he doesn’t need much incentive to follow that direction. He simply tightens his arm around Otoya’s waist and lets Reiji stroke his hair until he’s asleep again.

 

The next time he wakes, he’s alone on the bed and he blinks, trying to figure out what of all he remembers is a dream. A lot of it feels almost ethereal in his memory, and his head is cloudy. His mouth is dry, and he recognizes he is dehydrated just by the familiar symptoms. He sits up to rub sleep out of his eyes and wonder where his roommates are, since they’re always still asleep when he wakes up, but Otoya emerges from the bathroom in a t-shirt and sweatpants, hair wet from the shower he obviously just emerged from. “Morning,” he says, although his energy is slightly muted. Tokiya assumes it’s because of a headache that matches his own.

“What time is it?”

“Almost ten. Rei-chan let us sleep in.” Tokiya yawns and Otoya mimics it almost immediately. “He’s making breakfast right now.”

Tokiya realizes there are the sounds of something happening in the kitchen, but a moment later, Reiji bursts in with two pans in hand. “GOOD MORN—oh,” he says, his shoulders slumping when he realizes they’re both awake.

“Were you just going to wake us up with pots and pans?” Tokiya asks incredulously.

“Well, you didn’t wake up last time I did it,” Reiji teases. “Breakfast is ready!”

He and Otoya exit to the living room, but Tokiya walks into the bathroom to wash his face and hopefully wake himself up. When he goes back out, a place is set for him at the kotatsu with a bowl of rice, fish, miso soup, and hijiki seaweed, as well as a glass of water and some aspirin, which he is very grateful for. “Did you steal this from Hijirikawa?” he asks, making Otoya choke on his mouthful of rice.

“Rude! Tokki, you wound me!” Reiji clutches at his heart like he’s just been shot. 

Tokiya ignores him, sitting down and knocking back the pills in one movement before contemplating the food. It’s even healthy, which he’s impressed by. Usually Reiji’s cooking is an excuse to make the most fattening items possible. After a quick thank you for the food, he digs in, not realizing how hungry he is until the first couple of mouthfuls hit his stomach, and then he has to repress the urge to shovel it in. It’s good, which isn’t much of a surprise, since Reiji is actually a decent cook. 

“We’re taking a step back from our current curriculum,” Reiji announces when they’ve consumed about half of the meal. “Otoyan, Ranran needs some help with Renren’s newest dance, and Tokki, you’ll be helping Syotan with his vocals.”

“But that’s what we’re good at,” Tokiya points out after swallowing his mouthful of soup. “Hasn’t the whole thing been about how we need to address our weaknesses?”

“You’ve addressed them, and now we need to address the duet finals that are coming up in three weeks that you two haven’t even started, right? Plus, your group is important too!”

Tokiya hasn’t even been thinking about how hard the others must have taken their newest reviews, and he cringes at how badly that must have gone, if even Otoya had fallen victim to negative thoughts. Still, he’s excited to get away from the songwriting and dancing to help on vocals again, and it might lessen some of the pressure he’s been feeling the last few weeks. “Sure.”

“Ranmaru-sempai needs help with a dance?” Otoya asks in confusion.

“It’s Latin-style! Which, if you’ll remember, Ranran isn’t particularly good with the hip movements.” Reiji winks at him. 

“I’m not sure I’m any better,” Otoya says humbly, “but I’ll try!”

“Great!” He tousles Otoya’s hair with his free hand and nods at Tokiya. “Let’s smash this out of the park! Come on, war cry! R!”

He looks at Otoya expectantly, and Tokiya looks at Otoya expectantly because he assumes this is something they’ve talked about, but Otoya looks between the two of them with a lost expression on his face. “Huh?”

“Come on, this shouldn’t be too hard to figure out! I’m Reiji, so I’m an R, Otoyan is an O, and Tokki is a T. Now, let’s try this again! R!”

“O?”

“T.” Tokiya hopes his tone properly conveys what he thinks of this war cry, and Reiji completely ignores it, so it probably does. 

“You guys are no fun,” he pouts.

Otoya and Tokiya exchange a glance and shake their heads at each other, but Otoya has a bit of a smile on his face, so he probably thinks it’s charming in some way. Leave it to Otoya to be charmed by a lazy chant created by a lazier mentor. 

For his part, he resolves to never say it again.


	7. Dear . . . Burning my Lady

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doing what they're good at has definitely helped Otoya and Tokiya . . . but the redhead might be a little too good at what he is doing for Tokiya to bear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter again, since this wasn't originally supposed to even be in this fic, but then I heard this song and my hand slipped.

“Yo, Ichinose-kun. Thanks for all the help,” Syo says after their first week of working on his new song. “I’m sure you’re probably pretty swamped with your own stuff.”

“Not really,” Tokiya says, brushing off the thanks. “We’re all a team, right?”

Syo’s face lights up, as if he wasn’t expecting Tokiya to say something like that. “Yeah, you’re right!”

“How’s Shinomiya?” he asks because he hasn’t seen Natsuki at all since they started rehearsing together.

Syo shrugs. “He’s okay. I think he’s working really hard on trying to soften up his voice, which is ridiculous. I think his voice is great, but those reviews, you know.”

Now that he’s snapped out of his self-indulging depression, yeah, Tokiya does know. “Do you have your duet final figured out?”

He nods. “Natsuki wrote them last night. They’re a little cutesy for my tastes, but I’m going to work on making him realize he’s just fine the way he is.”

“Do you want help with that? Your song is going just fine.” There’s not a ton that Tokiya can help him with at this point; the big problem was mostly his confidence, just as Otoya’s was.

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“Not at all.”

“Yeah! I’ll ask Natsuki about it tonight and get back to you about it tomorrow! Thanks!” Syo suddenly stops to peer at him. “You’re being too helpful though. Did you get abducted by aliens or something? Or is Otoya finally just rubbing off on you?”

Tokiya is not particularly amused by the suggestion. “Or, I’ve figured out that this group is only going to work if we work together as a _group_ , but think what you’d like,” he says.

“Hey, I didn’t mean it as an insult!” Syo is quick to clarify. Tokiya looks down at him to quirk an eyebrow upwards, and the smaller idol scuffs the toe of his shoe in the dirt as if to concede. “How is Otoya anyways? I haven’t heard from him much. More in the last week than I did before, but . . .”

Tokiya thinks about lying about it for a moment in order to save Otoya face, but he’d probably tell people anyways, so he tells the truth. “He was pretty down for a bit, but I think he’s getting better.” The little bits of singing that Tokiya hears him do aren’t quite as strained on the high notes now, and he smiles a lot more than before. Tokiya hadn’t even noticed how depressed his roommate had gotten until he started to perk back up again.

“Man, if even Otoya got down, no wonder Natsuki’s so obsessed.”

Tokiya briefly wonders how Ren and Masato are, but Otoya’s been working with them, or at least Ren, so there’s probably some recovery happening at this point if there hadn’t been before.

He and Syo part ways as they approach the dorms, as Reiji waits for him outside. They walk to his mother’s bento restaurant again, and Tokiya is shocked to find that Reiji’s mother has made him a special bento like she does for Otoya, loading it up with vegetables and putting extra tomato on it. He can’t stop bowing as he thanks her for her consideration until Reiji slaps him on the back and tells him he’s officially a new Kotobuki child.

Talking as they eat, Reiji seems to approve of his tutoring of both Syo and Natsuki for their duet final and tells him to keep up the good work. Otoya rushes in as the conversation begins to die off, and then it picks right back up again as he tells them all about Masato and Ren, who seem to be at each other’s throats. “That’s good though,” he says as he slurps up some curry. “I mean, at least it seems better than before when they didn’t talk at all.”

They’ve admittedly always had a weird relationship, Tokiya thinks. 

“Hey, Otoyan. Mind if we watch your next rehearsal?” Reiji asks.

Otoya’s eyebrows furrow and then his expression clears as he nods. “Sure. It’s dress rehearsal, so it might be a little strange, but . . .”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Tokiya says, if only because he heard Ranmaru’s high praise the other day when Otoya wasn’t home and now he’s curious. 

Otoya flushes and looks down into his curry. “It’s not going to be anything that special,” he tells them. 

“Still, it’s work that you guys have been doing! Make me proud!” Reiji declares, catching Otoya in a headlock suddenly that has both Tokiya and Reiji’s mother trying to get him to break it.

 

Tokiya would like to beg to differ that the dance Otoya has created is “nothing special”.

Dear . . . Burning my Lady is suggestive and sensual and is a fantastic track of its own. Ren has really outdone himself there, and Tokiya makes sure to tell him that (Ren asks him if he’s going soft, which then elicits a glare). But it’s nothing in comparison to the dance Otoya directs, which has flare and life and looks nothing short of professional.

If the music video doesn’t go viral, Tokiya will eat his HAYATO costume.

They watch Ren perform it and Otoya watches back with them with a proud smile on his face. Even though Ren is dressed up for a dress rehearsal, Otoya is in his normal exercise gear. 

“I want to see something. Ittoki. Dance alongside him this time. I want to see how much you actually picked up and how much you just improvised,” Ranmaru says to Ren.

Ren splutters and says something about how that’s like comparing a fingerpainting to a Rembrandt, to which Tokiya isn’t sure who is which until the song starts.

Ren is good. Ren is excellent at capturing the attention, and he’s got the typical flirty persona to help him.

But Otoya. _Dear god_.

It’s like watching the graceful movements of a crackling fire. Tokiya’s mouth goes dry as he watches, aware that he’s staring with his mouth agape but unable to close it. Latin dance has so much hip work and is so fast that it’s mesmerizing to watch Otoya’s hips as they move and grind to the beat. It’s like watching perfection in motion, all topped off with a grin that could light up any room.

It’s so alluring that Tokiya can’t help but want to slide his hand to his roommate’s waist and just feel the skin undulate beneath his palm.

When they finish, Otoya and Ren give a bow, and their audience applauds, although Tokiya’s brain is still fried trying to figure out how to act naturally after watching that. He’s associated sweet and bubbly with his roommate, not sensual. The desire to touch him hasn’t abated, even as Otoya wipes the sweat from his face and returns back to their side with a chuckle. “See? Told you it wasn’t anything special,” he says humbly.

“Don’t be so shy!” Reiji says, patting his back. “That was wonderful!”

“Oi, Ikki! Stop saying it’s nothing special. It’s gotta be special, right?” Ren asks from across the room, wiping sweat from his own body.

Otoya immediately backpedals, saying it’s incredible when Ren performs it and it’ll be great tomorrow for the filming. As he does, Ren catches Tokiya’s eye and winks.

Tokiya swallows hard.


	8. ROULETTE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even talented idols struggle with songs sometimes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to say that the reactions to the last few chapters have been absolutely amazing and I'm so honored that you guys are enjoying this fic, particularly since I was on the fence about posting it. I'll be responding to everyone's comments tomorrow, but everyone who has given kudos or commented has made me feel so much happiness, it's crazy.
> 
> You all are the best and I Maji LOVE 1000% don't deserve any of you.
> 
> (Also, feel free to groan at that one.)
> 
> There are references to pachinko in this chapter, and it's kind of hard to explain what that is without having been inside of one, but think of a pinball casino. That's at least the kind of feel I was going for this chapter.

Even with how well their tutoring has gone, their duet final has gone . . . well, nowhere. Neither of them can think of lyrics or even a tune to start with. It’s like the barrel has finally been scraped dry, and now they both look at each other, trying to figure out what to do.

Tokiya sighs as he writes down his shopping list, knowing he should be writing something else down, but also knowing that stewing about it isn’t going to help. The lyrics will come to him when they come to him. No wonder Otoya spends ages agonizing.

Days in the city are rare now that they’ve debuted, but even idols need basic necessities. It’s been so long since they’ve gotten to go shopping that Tokiya’s had to repair his exercise pants rather than just buy a new pair. It’s at the top of his shopping list and underlined. Twice.

They all go together, the members of STARISH and QUARTET NIGHT hiding in plain sight among the crowds. Their disguises are once again half-assed, but aside from Otoya, Ranmaru, and Ai’s distinctive hair, it’s not like they’re recognizable except for up close. 

Reiji insists on doing a proper city day, which to him means lunch out, some entertainment shopping, clothes shopping, pachinko . . . 

They only last two minutes in the pachinko arcade before Ai and Camus drag Reiji out, and STARISH follows like a bunch of ducklings. 

Finally, they head to a department store, and Tokiya has spent the last ten minutes trying to figure out what has felt wrong. They exited the arcade and something changed immediately, but he can’t figure out what it is, particularly since Reiji has his arm slung over Tokiya’s shoulder, promising him that they’ll do some gambling next time like Tokiya cares. 

Finally, Tokiya realizes it’s because he hasn’t had Otoya chattering on his other side. When he looks back at his roommate, he’s looking away from the group, humming something under his breath. Tokiya recognizes this face. He’s got an earworm; the hamster wheel that are Otoya’s unpredictable thoughts is spinning, and he’s got to work them through before he’ll start back up on his normal discussions. He quickly excuses himself, saying he doesn’t need anything in the department store before seating himself on the bench opposite the building, and for a moment, Tokiya thinks about protesting, because Otoya _really_ needs socks without holes in them. But then Otoya pulls out a notebook and starts scribbling in it, and it finally hits him. 

Lyrics. He’s writing _lyrics_.

Tokiya figures the best thing in this case is just to leave him alone then. He goes about his shopping, making sure to grab some things for Otoya (like socks), and when he emerges twenty-five minutes later with his purchases, the redhead sends him a smile, holding up the notebook.

 

Otoya hasn’t just written lyrics. He’s got the entire song composed in his head already, all from some divine inspiration after stepping into the pachinko arcade. He strums the guitar in the basic melody so that Tokiya can get it down on piano, and then they send the note sheet to the composers’ course so that they can refine it.

The lyrics are good. They lack a lot of the verbosity that Tokiya suffers from, and other than a few tweaks for better flow, they call them ready. In their spare time, they begin to practice together, particularly once the track comes back from the composers’ course and sounds incredible. There’s a memo attached to the CD that commends them for their good notes on it, and Otoya preens at that. For a while, everything seems like it’s going well.

And then Tokiya gets sick. 

It’s a minor cold, and it really doesn’t do anything more than make him sniffle and his throat ache, but he definitely can’t sing like this. He spends the first two days in bed with a killer headache from the sinus pain, and then he remains sequestered after that because he can’t get the others sick so close to a deadline.

Otoya tries to help several times, but both Tokiya and Reiji push him out of the room every time he enters, so when he’s home, he often just stands at the door looking like a puppy who has been left outside. He’s gone for most of the day though, either at STARISH practice or practicing their new duet in the practice rooms. Tokiya’s dying to know how it’s going. There’s a few high notes that he’s concerned about and he’s not sure if Otoya’s completely recovered from his overthinking or whether he’s just spinning his wheels when he practices.

It’s driving him crazy.

Not to mention that he’s out of things to entertain himself with. The book of poetry from Masato has been read, his textbooks have been annotated, and all he wants to do is practice. Their deadline is fast approaching.

Finally, with three days left, Reiji declares him well enough to start again, and Tokiya takes Otoya from everything he’s got going so that they can cram the song. They spend hours in the practice room together, talking about harmonies and trying to stretch Tokiya’s range back out again after not using it for almost two weeks. They motivate each other; whenever it seems like one of them wants to give up, the other insists on keeping at it. He’s never realized just how determined Otoya can be, particularly when it comes to motivating him. There’s a fire in his eyes as he reminds Tokiya that they can do it with more practice.

They record just in time for the deadline. ROULETTE is officially born, and it’s now out of their hands. Tokiya finds that he’s a bit sad to see it go; it was definitely a labor of love. They celebrate by Tokiya cooking dinner, since they’d eaten vending machine food for the last few days in order to stretch their practice time. Otoya even promises to eat his vegetables if Tokiya shallow-fries them, which he begrudgingly does because Otoya needs the nutrition and it’s still healthier than vending machine food.

They put music on the stereo while Tokiya cooks and Otoya watches, occasionally assisting with basic tasks like chopping and stirring. The atmosphere is light, and Tokiya feels mild satisfaction from being in charge of the kitchen. In the practice rooms, they share the power, but here, Tokiya has all of the expertise, and it massages his ego slightly.

He heats up the oil for the shallow fry, and once bubbles start to form around the chopstick he inserts into it, he drops a few of the dredged vegetables in. He hears rather than sees Otoya approach behind him, and when the redhead peers over his shoulder in curiosity, Tokiya clamps his hand over the arms that twine around his waist before they can hit the hot pan. “Careful,” he chides, keeping his focus on making sure the batter doesn’t burn. Otoya merely hums a grateful sound.

It doesn’t occur to Tokiya just how domestic this is until he is almost done, watching the last few vegetables sizzle in the pan. Otoya’s head rests in the crook of Tokiya’s shoulder, and his fingers tap against Tokiya’s stomach in time with the music in the background. He can feel Otoya’s entire body press against his back. There’s a part of him that wonders when he became so desensitized to his roommate’s presence to allow this, but there’s something about it that feels nice.

Eventually, he has to move in order to finish up dinner, and he taps Otoya’s wrist to get him to release him before commanding him to set the table. Before long, they are seated with plates of homecooked food, and it’s the best thing Tokiya’s tasted in a while. Between the porridge from when he was sick to the vending machine dinners the last few days, it’s been a while since he had anything with decent texture. 

Otoya does the dishes as is their normal arrangement and Tokiya packages up a serving for Reiji when he gets home from practice, since his mentor has just spent most of the last two weeks nursing him back to health. Once he’s done, he seats himself on the couch with a book, determined to relax. Otoya seats himself at the other end with a sketchpad and pencil, which Tokiya knows is his guilty pleasure when he can’t go run off his energy. They sit in silence for a while, or at least as much silence as Otoya can stand before he starts asking Tokiya random questions. If anyone else had been asking, Tokiya would have thought they would be asking to see if they could stump him, but Otoya is just curious and Tokiya doesn’t mind admitting that he doesn’t know the details of the musculature in hands. 

After a while, the words of his book start to blur together, and he can feel his eyelids drooping. He shifts on the couch to try to get comfortable and remembers Otoya’s arms around him in the kitchen. That was comfortable. He was warm and soft, and the memory makes him approach the other side of the couch to sidle up to where Otoya is drawing in silence once again. There are parts of his drawing that require more attention than others, and Tokiya can always tell because the questions pause and Otoya begins to bite his lower lip. He ignores that, even though he should tell the redhead to stop or it will become chapped, and lays his head on Otoya’s shoulder instead. 

“Tokiya?” The question is quiet, obviously having seen that Tokiya’s eyes are already closed. There is the sound of Otoya’s pencil being put down and then he can feel a blanket settle over his lap. The pencil is picked up again, and Tokiya lets the sounds of Otoya’s soft breathing and graphite scratching the paper lull him to sleep.


	9. Moonlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Otoya starts acting weird about his birthday, Tokiya stalks him and finds out more than he thought he might.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally I was going to post this chapter tomorrow, but posting this chapter on Father's Day here in the US is a little too ironic for my tastes, so you're getting it early.
> 
> I'm sure someone wondered whether I was going to address this, and guess what? I did.
> 
> Once again, thank you all for your kudos and comments! I really do appreciate them!!
> 
> More lighter fluid is going to be dumped on the slow burn next chapter, so wait for that, yo.
> 
> (Quick bit of info: "Nii-chan" is like saying "big brother".)

Otoya’s birthday is April 11th, Reiji informs him, and Tokiya goes to argue because he’s _sure_ that they didn’t celebrate last year around this time before realizing that he has no idea when his roommate’s birthday is. Tokiya expected him to be as excited about that as he is about everything else, but he’s apparently not, since he’s still silent about it leading up to the week before.

April 11th is an odd date; it would have been just before they’d started at Saotome Academy, which means that it is right before they were assigned Reiji as their mentor as well. He supposes that it could have been lost in all of the change, but when he mentions it to Syo later, the blonde pauses and shakes his head, sure that he didn’t know either.

Eventually, Reiji brings the topic up over lunch. They are once again at his mother’s bento restaurant, and once again, she’s made special bentos for all of them. It’s become a weekly thing now that Tokiya looks forward to, even if it’s really not much different from just being in their dorm together. 

“My birthday?” Otoya asks, looking confused. 

“Yeah. It’s next week, right?” Reiji asks.

“It’s April 5th today,” Tokiya says when Otoya looks for his planner to check the date.

“Oh. Yeah, I guess it is.”

“We can take the day off,” Reiji suggests. “I’m sure there’s something you’d like to do, Otoyan,” he says when Otoya shrugs.

“Not really. I don’t mind working it.”

“What about family?” Tokiya asks. Ren’s older brother had come for his a few months before, and they’d seen Masato’s younger sister and Syo’s younger brother several times for special occasions. Tokiya’s mother has even made the occasional trip. “You could go visit them.”

“They’re in Tokyo anyways,” Otoya says, waving the suggestion off. “Really, it’s not important.”

Reiji and Tokiya exchange glances.

 

Otoya’s stance doesn’t change on the day, and it’s not until the Sunday before the 11th that Tokiya remembers something. Every Sunday morning, Otoya takes off, and he has ever since they started living together. At the beginning, Tokiya merely appreciated the silence, and after that seemed like prying, particularly when he brushed it off to Reiji after he asked. 

But there’s something weird about it. At first, Tokiya had assumed it was just some time alone, which he couldn’t begrudge Otoya, but he’s gone for most of the morning, and he’s always so silent when he leaves, like he’s trying not to wake anyone else up. If only he was that considerate every other morning, Tokiya muses as he hears Otoya get out of bed. 

It’s a split-second decision after he hears the front door shut. He’s totally going to invade Otoya’s privacy, but he’s got the feeling this has to do with the weirdness around Otoya’s birthday, and when he nudges Reiji to tell him, his mentor merely grunts and rolls over in bed.

Even with the hat over his red hair, Otoya still sticks out in the sparse Sunday morning crowds. He’s not hard to track, since he doesn’t seem to be avoiding anyone’s attention, and Tokiya supposes he might have a different reaction if he knew he was being followed. Well, that or if he could see out of the dark shades he was wearing. Otoya’s hair stands out, only muted behind the lenses, but Tokiya figures that he himself is probably mostly indistinguishable from other dark-haired, dark-clothed figures.

It’s a five-minute walk before Otoya enters a building, and Tokiya skips over to the other side of the street to look at it without attracting attention. The sign on the front says that it’s an orphanage, and the building is mostly well-kept aside from very clearly being old. There is a small fenced yard to the right of the building, and there are several children playing around in it. After a few minutes, all movement pauses and then they’re throwing themselves at the new figure with bright red hair that has stepped into the yard. The sight is heartwarming, and Tokiya shakes his head with a chuckle.

Of course, the kid with a heart of gold would volunteer at an orphanage in his spare time. Because why not?

Before he can talk himself out of it, Tokiya finds himself walking across the street and entering the building. This is totally going to tell Otoya that Tokiya has violated his privacy, but he figures it’s also the best gift he can get his roommate, since he seems determined to forget all about his birthday.

There is an old woman sitting in a rocking chair in the front room, and she looks up with a smile when Tokiya enters and slides his sunglasses off of his nose. “Hello,” she greets. “Are you here to adopt?”

There is something so strange about how she says that, like the children are goods in a store and the fact that he is definitely _not_ here to adopt a kid (particularly because he lives with two already), that it makes his brain spin without traction, and he splutters out nonsense for a good ten seconds. 

Otoya comes in around that time with children hanging off of his arms. “Hello!” he greets cheerfully before recognizing Tokiya. “Tokiya?” he asks, not sounding angry, but sounding like he very much wants an explanation now.

There’s a few more seconds of random syllable vocalization before his brain finally kicks back into gear, and he takes a deep breath to compose himself. “Do you want some help?” he asks.

Otoya blinks a few times, furrows his eyebrows, and then seemingly accepts whatever explanation he’s given himself, because he breaks out into a large grin. “Yeah. Come on,” he says, waving Tokiya to the coat closet and allowing him space to toe off his shoes.

There are around forty kids at the orphanage of various ages, but the one thing they all have in common is that they call Otoya “Nii-chan”. Some of the older kids even recognize Tokiya from STARISH, but Otoya is still the star of the show; they all adore him. He knows them all by name and asks about them individually, swinging the children into spontaneous piggyback rides and asking the teenagers about their exams. Most of them are finishing their education at the middle school level and not taking their high school entrance exams due to a lack of study space and transportation ability. One girl is set on becoming an idol as well, and Otoya promises to tell her when the exams for Saotome Academy are scheduled.

Tokiya mostly helps out with the older kids, assisting them with their homework. It’s been a long time since he’s taken math classes, but it eventually comes back to him. The younger ones look at him almost distrustfully, and one particularly brave one curls up in his lap when he seats himself at a table to help a seventh-grader with science. He can still look out the window to see Otoya surrounded by a group of children, entertaining them with singing or dancing or some antic. 

It’s not an unpleasant way to spend a morning, aside from the general stickiness of children and having to occasionally break up little spats between them that get physical. There is an obvious pecking order in the orphanage, even if Otoya treats them all equally.

After a while, the redhead enters the room and puts his hands on Tokiya’s shoulders. “We should get back to the dorms,” he says, and Tokiya agrees, although he’s not entirely sure what to do about the child napping on his legs. Otoya seems to see his problem and picks the little girl up, whisking her away to someplace in the back. Tokiya takes the time to say goodbye, and he gets a few tentative waves back from the younger kids. Otoya, on the other hand, gets mobbed with kisses and hugs when he announces it’s time for them to go, as well as a few pleas not to. He promises that he’ll be back next week and pushes Tokiya out the door before it can become a bigger scene than it already is.

“Why don’t we get a sweet potato?” he suggests, nodding his head at one of the few vendors left in the spring. 

It’s an attempt to accommodate for his strict diet, so Tokiya nods, and they order two of the piping hot, roasted sweet potatoes before heading to a nearby park, disguises back in order. Tokiya pulls back the foil on his sweet potato before breaking it in half, whereas Otoya does it before the foil, and makes it obvious that he’s the one more versed in these, because he doesn’t make a mess of his hands this way. Tokiya attempts to not look ridiculous licking his fingers in a public park.

They’re silent, and eventually, Tokiya figures he’ll need to start this conversation, since he’s the reason they’re having to talk about it at all. “So, you spend your Sundays volunteering at an orphanage? That’s not really something you have to hide,” he says before being cut off by a humorless bark. It’s a bizarre sound to hear from Otoya, and Tokiya looks over to find that the redhead is determined to look anywhere other than where he is.

“I’m not volunteering,” he says, his eyes sliding upwards to look at the sky. “I didn’t realize you didn’t figure it out.”

“Figure what out?” It’s not often that Otoya has all of the knowledge in the conversation, and it leaves Tokiya at a bit of a disadvantage.

“That’s where I’m from. The orphanage. I grew up there.” His eyes are downcast now, and he scuffs the toe of his shoe against the ground. “I’ve never known my dad, and my mom died in a plane crash when I was a kid. So, I went to live there. It’s my home.”

For a moment, Tokiya is stunned into silence, as there’s no way that the bright bundle of sunshine next to him has that dark of a past, but then things start to make sense. His optimism because no one else was ever there to cheer for him, the way he is always willing to share anything and everything he has, his eternal drive to help . . . 

Hell, it even probably explains that fear of hospitals and being fussed over and the way he brushes off his injuries.

It also explains why Tokiya’s never seen Otoya’s parents or seen birthday cards or heard him talk about his childhood memories, and a weight begins to lift off of his chest, because he’s not that shitty of a roommate. He hasn’t seen them because they don’t exist. He hasn’t just been willfully ignoring everything about Otoya’s life.

“That’s why they call you ‘Nii-chan’,” he says in understanding.

Otoya nods. “I’m one of them,” he says, his smile lacking cheer.

Tokiya’s never been particularly good at emotional moments, which is why he and Otoya have probably always gotten along okay, but he knows he needs to say something now to at least cheer him up. He readjusts himself on the bench so that their sides are pressed together, hoping that at least will impart some comfort in case his words fail. Now is the time to shelve his pride for his roommate. “You’re incredible,” he says, and this gets Otoya to look over at him in surprise. “You’ve literally managed to make all of this happen on your own and that’s amazing. That’s the kind of story movies and books get written about. But . . . they’re not your home now. We are.” He means Reiji, he means STARISH and all of the Shining Agency, but most of all, he means him. He feels at home with Otoya after almost two years of living together, and he can’t imagine having someone else to welcome him home at night. 

Otoya looks down and does what Tokiya thinks is a chuckle until he sees a tear fall from beneath his sunglasses. Otoya raises his hand to wipe it away, and Tokiya reaches into his pocket for his handkerchief, only to come up empty. He _had_ dressed in a hurry, so he hadn’t really made sure things were in the right places. Instead, he gently bats Otoya’s hand away, wiping away any further moisture with his thumb. Otoya leans into his hand with a choked, “Tokiyaaaaaaa”.

There is something about the moment, when Tokiya leans his cheek to the crown of Otoya’s head because it’s about as much contact as they can have in public, that makes a tune come to his head, and he hums as Otoya melts into him. He waits until Otoya’s breathing mostly stills before he pulls away, readjusting the redhead’s glasses on his face from where they’ve been skewed.

“That’s a nice song,” Otoya says, smoothing down the hair on the back of his head.

“I just thought of it. I guess you were right about things just coming to you,” Tokiya says.

Otoya’s mouth quirks into a grin. “Should I cry more often then?”

“Oh god no.”

“What are you going to call it?” Otoya asks, shoving a bit of sweet potato in his mouth. Tokiya has almost forgotten about his, but admittedly, it has kept his hands warm.

“I think I’ll need to iron out some of the lyrics before I can name it.” They’re already starting to form in his head, like they’re meant to be, and now Tokiya understands why Otoya’s lyrics feel so authentic.

“I can’t wait to hear it completed.” 

Neither can he, although, the way they’re writing out, he might want to keep this one for himself.


	10. Happy Birthday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Otoya's birthday is a day to remember for more reasons than one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're starting to hit the tipping point, and the lighter fluid is being poured on this flaming garbage bin of a fic. Stand back and watch the fire.

Even with Otoya’s reticence to celebrate his birthday (which Tokiya later finds out was just not knowing how to celebrate it, having grown up with 40 other children and a very small budget), he and Reiji throw a party for their roommate. It’s nothing big, since their dorm isn’t very big, but the way Otoya’s face lights up like he’s a child is more than worth the effort. The other members of STARISH and Quartet Night pitch in as well, and they manage a decent bash, complete with presents. Ren and Masato both insist on bringing two presents after missing the previous year’s birthday, which makes Otoya flustered.

Tokiya, of course, got him a gift as well, even though Otoya insisted he and Reiji not, although he compromised and made it useful. He’s owned a handheld tuner ever since he started taking vocal lessons as a kid, and there’s no doubt that with Otoya’s issues, it will help him improve. 

The food is eaten (well, mostly; there’s still leftovers that they’ll likely pick at for the next week or so), presents given, mirth spread, and then the others depart for their own dorm rooms, leaving only their trio. There is still a Piyo-chan clip in Otoya’s hair from Natsuki, who insisted that he wear something special, and Reiji helps the redhead take it out without ripping out a chunk of hair. Tokiya finishes wiping down the counters and removes the apron he’d been wearing to prevent spills from getting on his clothes, casual as they are. 

Reiji sends Otoya into the bathroom to take the first bath, and he and Tokiya both collapse on the couch. Even Reiji, with his seemingly boundless energy, seems tired from the day, and for good reason. Once he’d found out that Otoya had never celebrated a birthday, he’d been as determined as Tokiya was to make it as good as it could be imagined. There was even a homemade cake that Reiji had gotten up early to go to his mother’s restaurant to bake because their kitchen wasn’t equipped with an oven. It was a small price to pay though, Tokiya muses, thinking back on Otoya’s smile through the day. 

“We did good,” Reiji says, as if he’s reading Tokiya’s mind.

“We did.”

“I was worried Natchan’s cake might be accidentally consumed at one point, but it was only Ranran, so that’s good.” Natsuki’s cake, he’d revealed later, had been a mixture of cake, squid ink, soy sauce, and natto in an abomination that could only be considered a biohazard. Ranmaru had accidentally taken a piece, although Tokiya had a sneaking suspicion that had to do with one of the Quartet Night members and sabotage.

He’d never been so grateful that the members of STARISH all liked each other.

“I’m not sure he’ll ever taste again,” Tokiya says.

Reiji snorts. There is silence for a moment, and then he clears his throat. “You know, Otoyan already brought up doing this for you.”

“Your birthday is first.”

He gasps in excitement, completely overacting and clasping his hands to his face. “Tokki! You’re not saying you’re going to celebrate with us this year, are you? Are you actually saying you might enjoy my company?”

“Don’t go that far,” Tokiya warns him.

“You’re turning into a softie!” Reiji pinches his cheek, and Tokiya recoils, trying to get away from his crazy mentor. 

“Get off of me!”

He and Reiji slap each other’s hands for a few minutes before his senior pulls away, laughing. “You really are different from last year. In a good way.”

“Yeah, maybe I had a little bit to learn.” Looking back at the previous year, he remembers how alone he felt, even with the other members of STARISH around him. He’d been ambitious, but he’d been trying to shake off HAYATO’s shadow too. He was still trying to do that, he amended, but now he actually had people he considered close to him. 

“You can thank me anytime, you know.”

Tokiya looks over at Reiji incredulously. “You think that’s all because of you?” he asks.

“Isn’t it? I mean, if I hadn’t told you that you and Otoyan weren’t _really_ friends yet, would you have reached out like you did? Well, I’m pretty sure Otoyan’s still the one who reached out, but you at least allowed him to! You know, minus when you almost killed him, but . . .”

Tokiya still doesn’t like to think about that night, partially because of the fear he can remember feeling after watching Otoya fall, but also because his chest tightens when he thinks of how he had crawled into the futon beside him that night. It’s one of the sensations he hasn’t quite managed to forget, and on nights where he can’t sleep, he listens to Otoya’s even breathing on the bunk above him and pretends that his roommate is curled up on his chest again. “It was an accident,” he grumbles.

“I’ve been thinking . . . maybe it’s time for a song with all of us. I’ve been waiting to use that R.O.T. chant for something other than just annoying you with it.”  
“I’m glad you’ve noticed,” Tokiya says dryly.

Reiji chuckles. “Think you wouldn’t mind stepping into a recording booth with both of us?”

“I could probably do that.” He still thinks quite fondly of ROULETTE, and as much as he’d like to pretend otherwise, he admires Reiji’s musicality. It would be quite the learning opportunity. 

Reiji’s eyes sparkle, and Tokiya suddenly regrets agreeing. He’s not entirely sure what that look means, but it can’t be anything good.

Luckily, Otoya saves him when he steps out of the bathroom, a towel around his neck. “What’s going on?” he asks, noticing their odd body language.

Reiji bounds to his feet. “Otoyan! Say you’ll sing a song with Tokki and I!” he says, holding onto Otoya’s hands like he’s proposing marriage instead of a temporary singing alliance.

“Really?” Otoya looks over at Tokiya and jumps in excitement. “I can't wait!”

The movement has water flying off of his hair; Otoya’s hair is thick and he’s not particularly careful about drying it before stepping out of the bathroom. Tokiya wipes some of the drops from his face. “Mind using your towel a little more?” he asks.

Otoya flushes and apologizes.

“Go ahead and shower, unless that’s enough of one for you,” Reiji teases him.

Tokiya makes sure to shove him over as he passes to get to the bathroom.

He showers off quickly before stepping into the bathtub, taking a deep breath and sinking into the warm water. He can still smell the scent of Otoya’s shampoo lingering on the tile, and it makes him feel more comfortable than he wants to admit. After two years of the same shampoo though, he supposes that’s natural. It’s something familiar and constant in his life.

Otoya is something familiar and constant in his life.

Every time he tries to think about his feelings for Otoya, his head gets all jumbled. There’s clearly something in him that thinks the redhead is special. He likes feeling close to him and likes seeing him smile. He trusts him in a crowd, although, to be fair, Otoya handles crowds like a pro thanks to his inherent charm. Only Ren, who flirts relentlessly, gets anywhere near the same reaction with very little provocation. There is something about his positivity that attracts people to him. 

There’s also apparently something about his positivity that made him utterly kissable that day at the theme park. 

Tokiya would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought of doing it again, although he has better self-control than to ever actually do it. Wanting to feel his best friend’s mouth moving against his isn’t normal friend behavior. Neither is wanting to thread his hand through that red hair or wanting to press kisses against the hollow of his neck, particularly after dance practice when it glistens with sweat. But those aren’t the only things he wants to do to Otoya. He wants to be there for Otoya to rest his head on when he falls asleep and he wants to cradle his face in his hands whenever Otoya gets discouraged. He wants to watch that smile dawn over his face when something goes well. 

He wants a lot of things when it comes to Otoya, and he’s not sure what of those things is normal to feel. He’s also not sure what it means that he feels things that clearly aren’t normal to feel about a friend.

There is a crash in the front room, and the stereo turns on. Tokiya can feel the bass through the tile, and he knows it’s Hyper x Super x Lover based on the rhythm, so he can only hope their coffee table will survive.

He gives them just a couple of minutes to enjoy it before stepping out of the water and drying off. The confusion he’s felt for the last few months isn’t going to resolve itself in one night and at this point, he’s more worried about their furniture than his future. No matter what happens, Otoya is still home.

The look they give him when he steps out of the bathroom is entirely too innocent, so he wonders what’s broken now. Reiji quickly excuses himself to take the last bath. 

“What was it?” Tokiya asks.

Otoya flushes and looks away. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He cocks an eyebrow and walks over to the trash can to find the remnants of the plastic microphone stand that Reiji had brought when they moved in for some bizarre reason. It’s never held a microphone (although it did hold a flashlight one night when the lightbulb for the lamp had burned out), nor should have it with its shoddy construction. “Could have been worse,” he says, seating himself at the table on the floor with his roommate. 

“It was an accident.”

“It always is with you two,” Tokiya says, although he doesn’t mean it unkindly. Otoya and Reiji just have too much energy, and the breaking things is never malicious. He sends Otoya a smile to show that he’s not disappointed and Otoya perks up and launches into gratitude for his role in the day. Tokiya waves it off and distracts him with talk of their impending work schedules. 

It’s about ten minutes of conversation before Tokiya realizes that Otoya is fidgeting a lot. He’s playing with his fingers and shifting how he sits almost constantly. “Everything okay?” he asks.

It surprises him when Otoya flushes a deep red, his eyes snapping down to the table. He seems to fight with himself on something, and when he finally opens his mouth, his voice is quiet. “Can I . . . Can I ask you for something?”

Well, it’s uncharacteristic for Otoya to ask, let alone be this bashful about it, but Tokiya figures there’s no harm. “Yeah.”

Otoya’s blush deepens. “I . . . um . . .” He reaches for words, and Tokiya is utterly baffled by how much he is struggling. After a moment and a deep breath, Otoya presses his hands on the table between them and leans over to kiss him.

Tokiya’s too surprised to do much, and it’s not a particularly good kiss, since Otoya’s so nervous that he hits closer to the corner of Tokiya’s mouth and pulls away almost immediately. He remains leaned over, supported by the table between them as he turns so red that Tokiya would be worried all the blood in his body was in his face if he wasn’t more absorbed with the fact that _Otoya had just kissed him_. “Sorry,” he mutters, beginning to pull away.

Tokiya resolves not to think about this in the morning. 

He grabs Otoya’s wrist and guides his head with the other hand to join their mouths together again. In the previous kiss, Tokiya had been in total control, but this time, he lets Otoya explore. The redhead is obviously shocked for a moment before he coaxes Tokiya’s lips to move. 

Otoya’s hands are engaged keeping him hovering over the table, so Tokiya takes the opportunity to slide his hands into red hair. It’s slightly damp but it’s immaculately soft. Otoya’s tongue laps against Tokiya’s bottom lip to request entrance, and the feeling makes him tighten his grip as he allows it. 

He wants to pull Otoya into his lap and have his way with him. Just this kiss is making thoughts go through his head about the kinds of sounds Otoya might make with hands sliding down his spine, or the blush he could evoke if he just moved his lips a few inches south and bit down on the skin of his neck. 

It finally hits him that these are not platonic feelings _at all_. This isn’t confusion (well, he’s still confused, but that’s not causing him to kiss his roommate right now); this isn’t even teenage experimentation. He wants Otoya Ittoki far more than he’s comfortable with. 

And the worst part of it is that he doesn’t want to _stop_. 

Otoya pulls away first, breathing hard. He looks so good like this, with mussed hair and reddened lips, a fine blush coating his features. Tokiya indulges his own desires, swiping his thumb over the bottom lip lightly. “Happy birthday,” he says, and it comes out low and gravelly, like he’s speaking from his chest rather than his throat.

The squeak that comes from Otoya’s mouth as he flushes is one of the cutest things Tokiya thinks he’s ever heard. The redhead drops back to his side of the table, as if his knees have finally given out, his fingertips touching his mouth. 

Tokiya should be more bashful, he thinks, but there’s something about realizing that his feelings aren’t new that has him feeling strangely centered. Nothing is changing on his side; he just now has enough knowledge to realize what those feelings are.

The bathroom door opens, and Reiji looks at the two of them with an inscrutable expression. “You two are quiet,” he says, and this obviously breaks Otoya, because he stammers something about going to bed and flees into the bedroom.

Tokiya thinks Reiji’s teasing them because he’s just figured out what happened, but his stunned expression when Otoya flees tells him something different. “It is late,” Tokiya says, rising from his position at the table fluidly. “Good night, Kotobuki.”

Otoya is already in bed, and Tokiya can see that the covers are flipped up over his head to hide his face. He chuckles and gets into bed himself, knowing that he will dream about what just happened at the table.


	11. GAMUSHARA ROmanTic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tokiya likes being alone, or at least he thinks he does. He's been wrong before though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to post this chapter last night, so whoops. 
> 
> If you've noticed the final chapter count go down, it's because I smashed two chapters together here, since the original GAMUSHARA ROmanTic chapter was too short to publish in my opinion. The next chapter will be short too, so I'll probably post it on Sunday, just as a heads up.
> 
> I love Ren. I fought a lot on what to do with this conversation, but in the end, I left it fairly ambiguous. Feel free to think whatever you'd like.
> 
> Also, quick shoutout to Reiji's mom because this is her last chapter.
> 
> EDIT 09/05/2018 :: I keep meaning to point out that part of this chapter was inspired by Lana_Fair's fic "The Distance Between Us", so go read it! It was fantastic inspiration for Tokiya's trip to Nagoya.

Whatever calm Tokiya had the night before is gone when he wakes up. He feels too warm, bathed in sweat after his dreams, and the hand dangling down from the top bunk is a rude reminder of what had happened between himself and Otoya. For a moment, Tokiya wonders what sort of drug he was on to allow that to happen and complicate his feelings further, but the answer is sleeping in the bed above his.

There is literally only one person he can think of to talk about this with, and Tokiya dresses quickly because he knows Masato and Ranmaru will be out for morning vocal practice and he doesn’t really want them walking in on this conversation.

Ren blinks blearily at him when he answers the door but lets him in anyways and waves him towards the couch. “Anything to drink?” he asks, searching around the apartment for a shirt to pull over his bare chest.

Tokiya declines.

Once he gets settled with a cup of tea, Ren looks over at Tokiya with expectant eyes. “So? I assume this isn’t just a social call. At 9 in the morning.”

Tokiya almost tells him that 9am isn’t early, but he does need his advice, so he bites his tongue. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Is this about Ikki?”

“How did you know?”

Ren holds up two fingers. “One, if it were anything else, you would have gone to Masa, but also, you were pretty damn obvious during that dress rehearsal.”

“Obvious?”

“You couldn’t keep your eyes off of him. Which I guess I’ll allow as long as you promise to never look at me that way. You’re really not my type.”

Why did he think talking to Ren was a good idea again? 

“So, what’s the deal? Start from the beginning,” he encourages when it becomes obvious that Tokiya isn’t going to say anything.

Tokiya swears him to secrecy and then recounts everything because he needs someone who isn’t involved in it to give their opinion. When he finishes up with what had happened the night before, Ren whistles under his breath.

“So, let me get this straight. You kiss him, not once but _twice_ , and have just now figured out it’s an issue?” 

“You’re not being helpful,” Tokiya says, glaring at him.

“Not much to be helpful about. You’re smitten in pretty much every sense of the word it sounds like, but you can’t do anything about it. No relationships rule, remember?”

Well, it wasn’t like he was about to get into a relationship he didn’t understand, so that wasn’t an issue . . . or was it? “We shouldn’t talk about it at all?” Tokiya asks, trying to get what Ren is saying.

“What’s the point? Isn’t it just going to get awkward if you do?” 

“You’ve thought about this.” 

The noise that Ren makes neither confirms nor denies it. “Have I helped you enough yet?” he asks with a yawn.

“No! What am I supposed to do with this information?” Tokiya asks.

“File it away. Use it for your songs or something. It’s easy enough to add in some references to women at the end, isn’t it? That sort of thing sells.”

Seeing as Tokiya had previously had some reference like “my princess” in most of his songs in order to fill space, he supposes he’s right. It can be authentic and not at the same time. He suddenly wonders how much of Ren’s ladykiller vibe is just a façade.

“Look, we just have a year left. Let everything sit for the next year, yeah? You can’t do anything about it until then anyways, and if you’re lucky, maybe it’ll go away. Although, Ikki, that’s a rough one. He’s a good guy.”

“No one better,” Tokiya agrees.

Ren gets up from the couch, waving as he returns back to the bedroom. “Good luck,” he says, obviously ending their impromptu meeting there. Tokiya lets himself out.

 

It takes Reiji, Otoya, and Tokiya almost three weeks to record GAMUSHARA ROmanTic. Partially because Reiji and Tokiya bicker about the title, but also just trying to blend their three voices together in a satisfying way. Tokiya was right about the song being a learning experience. It’s complex in a technical sense and even has some minor chord progressions. He and Otoya learn to function like gears in the machine, working independently but together at the same time, just as Quartet Night does. It’s like passing a baton rather than the constant teamwork they do with STARISH, and it’s definitely a different way of doing things. Tokiya isn’t sure that he likes it, but the song turns out okay, especially with the instrumental track behind it. 

Working with Otoya again is nice. Tokiya puts his feelings to the back of his mind, reminding himself that they’re nothing new, and for the most part, it works. The redhead is the only one who has worked with both Reiji and Tokiya, and he translates some of the odder things they say for the other. He’s also excellent at pointing out when Tokiya’s lyrics sound a little wooden or when Reiji’s voice is tight. For the most part, it’s enjoyable working among the three of them, minus Tokiya and Reiji attempting to get on each other’s nerves.

When they finally call it a wrap and post-processing is finished, they plan to go to Reiji’s mother’s restaurant again to celebrate. It’s a bit strange when Otoya says he’ll be a little late, since Tokiya knows he doesn’t have anything scheduled, but he figures Otoya has his reasons and leaves him to it.

Reiji is there first, like normal, eating a karaage bento that looks like it was made just for him, and Tokiya is given his within seconds of walking in along with a kiss to his cheek from Reiji’s mother that he’s learned to accommodate. 

“Any ideas what Otoyan’s doing?” Reiji asks. Tokiya shakes his head, because he has no clue either. 

It quickly becomes clear when Otoya runs in, as out of breath as always from running across the campus, with a disc case and a card in his hands. He and Reiji sign the card quickly (Tokiya reminds himself to scold Otoya later for not giving them a heads up), and it’s back in the envelope by the time Reiji’s mother comes to their table with the bento. 

When they present her with the thank you card and the first copy of their newest single, he thinks she’s going to cry. Reiji huddles them all up for a group hug, and she kisses all of their foreheads.

Tokiya nods when his gaze meets Otoya’s. The smile on the redhead’s face only gets bigger.

 

With the advent of summer, their odd jobs start picking up, meaning that there’s not a lot of free time between the three of them. Reiji, at least, keeps to the Shining Agency campus, but Otoya and Tokiya are in various places for most of June and part of July. Otoya’s become popular in commercials and modeling, where his enthusiasm oozes through. Tokiya, on the other hand, seems to get relegated to one-off acting roles for weeks, all on trash TV that he’ll never watch until Otoya insists on it with popcorn in the name of supporting the members of STARISH. It’s not until he has to go to Nagoya for a role that he realizes just how close he is with his two roommates.

A week in a hotel had seemed like a treat at the time he’d accepted it. Sharing a room with two other people is, by definition, devoid of privacy and silence. There’s always something going on in their little dorm, and it’s overwhelming sometimes. This would be a nice break, and then he’d go back and bring Reiji and Otoya the snacks from the minibar and a few stories from the set.

After the first day of filming, he returns to his room, slides his jacket off, and . . . sits down because there’s no one to stop him from doing so. There’s no Reiji to make a comment about the remnants of stage makeup on his face or Otoya to lean over the back of the couch to ask about his day. And it feels a little . . . lonely, he thinks as he shakes his head at himself. He should be enjoying the silence! And there is a part of him that does, but the bigger part of him kind of wants them to be there.

He checks his cell phone, but there are no messages; they have a strict no-texting-during-work-hours policy, and since Tokiya wasn’t sure what time he’d finish, he’d encouraged them to just . . . not.

How dumb was he?

He taps out a quick message to Otoya asking him about the commercial he’d been scheduled to film before collapsing backwards on the bed. He has a book in his luggage and a couple of notebooks full of half-finished lyrics, but he doesn’t really want to be doing either right now. 

The phone in his hand buzzes, Otoya replying back with a lot of happy emojis and about seven one-sentence text messages. He chuckles as he reads through and then looks at the contact in his phone. He contemplates it for a few seconds and then presses the call button.

Otoya picks up on the second ring. _“Hello?”_

“Hey. Am I interrupting anything?”

 _“Nope!”_ Otoya seems as happy to hear from him as he is to hear his roommate’s voice. _“How’s Nagoya?”_

“It’s fine. Normal job, different location. It’s a little weird not to come back to the dorm.”

_“It’s weird not having you around too. Rei-chan’s got rehearsal until late tonight, so I’m alone here. It’s . . . weird.”_

“You could always go visit the others.”

_“I think I’m going to play soccer with Syo once he’s out of practice. Ai-sempai seems stricter than Ranmaru-sempai sometimes, I think.”_

“He is.” After spending the couple of weeks tutoring Syo in vocals, there’s no doubt in his mind that Ai is the strictest of them, unless Camus is worse. Then again, he might have to be extra strict with Cecil. “Have you never worked with him?”

_“No, not yet. Natsuki said it might be a good idea to though. Apparently, he’s even more perfectionistic than you.”_

Tokiya would argue about that characterization, but he’s pretty sure that’s correct. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind tutoring you at some point. Just, um . . . be focused.”

_“The way you said that sounds scary.”_

As they talk, Tokiya can feel some of the loneliness draining away. The shadows of the room don’t feel as dark, and he curls up in the middle of the bed, relaxed. He can’t remember ever feeling this way about a phone call—maybe as a child receiving a call from one of his parents—but he’s desperate enough that he’ll take whatever comfort he derives from it. 

_“Hey, Tokiya? When do you get back again?”_

He’s fairly sure they’ve talked about his return fifteen times since the trip was scheduled, but he’s feeling generous, so he answers. “Saturday.” Even as he says it, it sounds so far away, and he can hear Otoya wilt on the other end of the line.

_“That’s a long time.”_

“Yeah.” It’s the longest he and Otoya have been separated since enrolling in the Academy, and that feels a little weird. 

_“Can you call every night?”_ Tokiya pauses, surprised by the request, and obviously Otoya takes that the wrong way, because he starts talking over it. _“I mean, I’m sure you’re busy and everything, and if it’s a problem, don’t—”_

“—I will. And don’t worry about texting me while I’m on set. I’ll just make sure it’s on silent.”

They talk until Syo arrives at the dorm, and then he gets greeted by Syo because Otoya has always been a little extra. Their conversation doesn’t last long; he likes Syo well enough, but they don’t have the kind of relationship that allows them to just talk without awkwardness. 

For his part, as he hangs up, Otoya promises to text him once he gets back from playing soccer. Tokiya sighs and relaxes back into the bed before deciding to grab a bath, knowing that he won’t hear from Otoya for at least a while.

 

The week passes uneventfully. He does call Otoya every night, and one of the nights they spend almost three hours on the phone. Tokiya describes Nagoya to him, since he’s never been there, and Otoya updates him on the daily antics of STARISH and practice and the odd gigs he’s managed to get. 

Reiji calls him once too, although their relationship is so antagonistic on the surface that he hangs up on his mentor after Reiji pushes the envelope just a little too much. That’s not to say he doesn’t appreciate the intent behind it.

Finally, the film wraps up, the set is torn down, and they’re free to go home. Tokiya spends every moment of the hour-long plane ride tapping his foot impatiently. He wants to return back to his dorm where his friends are. Where his home is.

It’s just after noon once the car drops him off at Shining Agency, which, of course, means that their room is completely empty. Otoya is in voice lessons and Reiji is . . . doing whatever Reiji does on Saturdays. Tokiya’s honestly not sure.

He unpacks his suitcase and starts a load of laundry, looking at the mild mess of their apartment. It’s not that Otoya and Reiji are messy, but they definitely make the dorm look “lived in”, which Tokiya usually doesn’t appreciate. He does today though, because it’s a sign that they’ll return. 

About a half hour in, there is a knock on the door, and Masato stands there, surprised when he sees Tokiya answering it. “Ichinose-kun!”

“Hijirikawa-kun.” To say that he is just as surprised to see Masato is an understatement.

“I was actually going to ask if Kotobuki-sempai was here, but you could help me, if you’re not busy.”

Something that both he and Reiji could help with? He lets Masato in and they sit around the coffee table. Masato pulls out a piece of sheet music—handwritten, because Masato is crazy devoted like that—and slides it across the table to Tokiya. “I’m struggling to practice my notes without a partner, but I’m having an issue finding someone who has a large enough range for this.”

“I can give it a shot.”

The song, ORIGINAL RESONANCE, is _beautiful_. The lyrics are elegant without being verbose, the music is complex and Masato has recorded a wonderful piano solo to accompany it. All in all, it’s incredible, and the fact that he’s having problems finding someone to do the duet with him is a crime. There is a beautiful drama in the lyrics and the music, and Tokiya knows, he _wants_ to do this piece.

“What do you think?” Masato asks.

“It’s honestly amazing. I’ve never heard anything like it,” Tokiya says, getting up to get them both some water. “You’re having problems finding a partner?”

Masato nods. “I was thinking about Shinomiya-kun, but I believe you might be a better choice, if you’re interested.” 

It’s just like Masato to get straight to the point, which is one of the things Tokiya appreciates about him. “I’d love to.”

Masato smiles and bows his head. “I will prepare us a practice room in a few days. I see that you’ve just returned from your trip to Nagoya.”

“Yes.” It reminds him that he has gifts, and he stands to retrieve them. For Masato, he has gotten Moriguchi pickles, and for Ren, some Nagoya margarine after hearing him talk about it to Haruka once.  
Masato thanks him and invites him over for dinner, and usually, Tokiya would agree, but he’s still waiting to see his roommates, so he declines. 

After Masato leaves, he transfers his laundry to the dryer and goes over the sheet music. It’s been a while since he’s been so excited for a piece; GAMUSHARA ROmanTic was a great learning opportunity, but it was just that. ORIGINAL RESONANCE is a song that he feels he can conquer and make his own, and Masato will be patient with his need for perfection.

Finally, once the dryer is almost done, the front door opens, and Reiji enters. His mouth spreads into a giant smile as soon as he sees Tokiya, and without warning, he launches himself forward, hanging on Tokiya’s neck. “Tokki! You’re back!”

“At least take off your shoes!” Tokiya scolds. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“It’s been so lonely without your normal grumpy energy around the apartment.”

“Weirdly enough, it was lonely without your meddling too, Kotobuki.”

Just the hint of fondness is enough to have Reiji’s gaze soften, and the smile to actually reach his eyes. “When are you going to start calling me Rei-chan?” he pouts.

“Probably never.”

“You could even give me another nickname!”

“Your name works well enough.” He’s even dropped the honorific from it; he’s not going to do much more.

“Why don’t you love me, Tokkiiiiiiiii?”

“I’m sure if you think _really_ hard, you might be able to figure it out.”

He gives Reiji his present of Frog manju, which he’d only gotten because the face reminded him of his mentor, and Reiji starts to make tea to go with them, declaring that Otoya should be out of class soon after glancing at the clock. 

Tokiya finishes up his laundry and gives in to eating one of the manju (they were a decent purchase, he admits) while he waits. Eventually, the front door opens again with a cheerful “I’m home!” and Tokiya makes sure to be the louder one to welcome him back.

Otoya’s eyes grow wide, and he flips his shoes off in the same movement as he runs forward (it’s kind of impressive when Tokiya thinks back on it) before scrambling to throw himself at Tokiya. It’s a bit like when an owner returns home and the dog runs to greet them, but Tokiya decides he’d rather have Otoya than a dog as he catches the redhead in a fairly practiced movement at this point. “You’re home!”

“I am.” 

“Tell me everything about Nagoya!” he says, and once Tokiya gives him his gift of Ogura Toast cookies, they sit at the table with more tea and sweets and he recounts everything that happened. It feels good to have the undivided attention of his two roommates, and it’s a relief that they’re just as happy to see him as he is to see them. 

He is the center of attention for the night, even when he attempts to find out what happened while he was gone, and at the end of the night, when he gets ready to go to bed, Reiji pulls him into the full-sized bed, Otoya crashing on his other side. They both look at him so earnestly that he rolls his eyes and sighs, but he doesn’t get up. He does clarify that he’s not going to cuddle with anyone, and both of them agree as they throw the blankets over him and sidle closer. He can feel them touching him as they fall asleep, and the sounds of their even breathing lull him to sleep better than the silence did in the hotel room. 

Later that night, he wakes up with Reiji’s elbow in his face so he pushes Reiji off the bed in retaliation. There are a few minutes of silent fighting involving a pillow and one of Reiji’s socks from the floor before Tokiya compromises and slides Otoya, who is sleeping with his arms around Tokiya’s waist so that he doesn’t fall off the bed, to his other side so that the redhead is in the middle. 

Otoya shifts and yawns but doesn’t wake up, instead snuggling in closer to both of his roommates. Reiji scratches his head while Tokiya lays back down, savoring this moment even though he was hit with what was most likely a dirty sock less than two minutes before. It reminds him of the few times he can remember cuddling with his parents as a child, warm and beloved. 

And then something falls on his face, and he knows without having to open his eyes again that it’s the damn sock and he vows when he wakes up, he’s going to get revenge on Reiji.


	12. ORIGINAL RESONANCE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Masato is good at getting to the heart of issues, which shouldn't be surprising to Tokiya. Now he just has to figure out how to apply that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick heads up that there was a chapter yesterday too, so if you haven't read that yet, go read it first. This chapter just didn't fit in with the next one and it's so short that I didn't want to have you guys have to wait for it for a few days.
> 
> Also, writing both Masato and Tokiya alone in a conversation is the most awkward thing I've written in ages.
> 
> Also, I think this is the last chapter with Haruka in it, but I had to fix that relationship after I made it awkward.
> 
> . . . Tokiya is just really awkward, my dudes.

ORIGINAL RESONANCE becomes Tokiya’s new obsession. It’s a welcome distraction from the lyric writing and the random jobs, and besides, Masato is blissfully uncomplicated. Unlike his partnerships with everyone else so far, Masato is focused on the music and not on Tokiya himself. They spend a lot of long nights in the practice rooms, refining and reworking it until it becomes even better than it was before, if that’s even possible. 

“I quite like it,” Masato says when they wrap up one of their last practices before recording. “It’s different from anything else I’ve done.”

It seems more like Masato than anything, and Tokiya says so, but Masato shakes his head. 

“It’s more like the me I want to become. Your contributions have helped greatly, Ichinose-kun. I have greatly enjoyed collaborating with you.”

“The pleasure’s all mine.”

“It’s strange. I had always assumed that to become the best, I would need to reach further into myself, but with this piece, I’ve found more success with your assistance. I do not think I would have gotten this far without you.”

Tokiya’s starting to realize this as well, which is why, when Masato says it out loud, it feels like he’s just shocked him with an electrical current. STARISH has helped him to enjoy music again, which he had thought might be the key to improving his own musical skills, but that hasn’t helped him to become half of the artist he is now. In fact, he can probably thank a certain mentor and redhaired roommate for their contributions to his authenticity and sincerity. Masato has helped him understand his own vocal power and given him a beautiful example of elegance in words. 

“We’re teammates, Hijirikawa-kun. Maybe we should be spending more time helping each other out rather than trying to improve just ourselves.”

Masato nods. “You can call me Masato. I believe we may have reached that point in our friendship at this point.”

“Tokiya then,” he agrees.

And, because they’re both socially awkward as hell, they shake hands over it, which just feels weirdly formal for their newfound closeness.

By the time they’ve wrapped up recording for ORIGINAL RESONANCE, the mentors seem to have realized the power of having them work together, because Otoya and Natsuki are suddenly working on a piece, as well as Ren, Syo, and Cecil. It feels odd to be the first ones done, but given their headstart, Tokiya supposes that it gives him a chance to listen to the others’ songs.

Their process is a little different, because they have to write lyrics together, but both groups are in the practice rooms by the second week. Having Ren, Syo, and Cecil in the same song sounds a little bizarre, as they’re all very distinctive voices, but it’s an intentional group, he realizes as they work on blending their sounds. All three of them have very different styles: Ren is seductive and low, Syo is overwhelmingly masculine, and Cecil is sweet and foreign. And they have to somehow make that work for them.

Natsuki and Otoya are a bit of a strange group, and when he’d first heard the pairing, he’d figured they’d spend a lot of time goofing off, with their easily distractible personalities. Instead, they’re on task most of the time, and they constantly talk each other up. The positive reinforcement makes their song strong, even with how it constantly dips out of Otoya’s high range. Natsuki teaches him how to breathe and hurdle towards the note blindly in the hopes that it will come out, which is a lesson that Tokiya hasn’t managed to get across yet. When Tokiya listens to the song through the closed practice room door, Otoya doesn’t miss a single note.

Tokiya and Masato, meanwhile, flit between the two groups with advice and help them with arrangement notes for the composers’ course. This is the closest they’ve come to working as STARISH in a long time, and it feels really good. 

It feels good enough that he seeks out Haruka to compose a new song for them. 

“A new song for STARISH?” she asks for the third time, as if she’s not really understanding.

He nods. “All seven of us.”

“Are you sure? It’s not that I don’t believe you,” she says quickly, “but I’m just really surprised. It’s been a while since you’ve all sang together.”

She’s not wrong. They’ve been so obsessed with their own solo and occasional duet things that their group—the whole reason they made it to the Masters Course—has suffered. “We have to start up again sometime,” he says.

She giggles at that, more happy than humored. “I’ll start writing then! I didn’t expect you to be the first one to approach me about it though, Ichinose-kun.”

He figures this is more up Otoya’s alley than his, but if there’s something he’s learning slowly, it’s that he can’t expect someone else to take control of everything while he works out his issues. He’s still afraid of HAYATO being the most successful he’ll ever be, but this is a step in the right direction.

“I was a little sad when you started distancing yourself from me, but Shinomiya-kun made me understand what you were going through,” she says even though he hasn’t responded. “I was so excited about you being my favorite idol that I didn’t think about how being constantly compared to him might make you feel. I’m sorry.” She bows low, almost at a 90-degree angle before she straightens up. “You’re not HAYATO anymore. You’re Tokiya Ichinose, and it’s my dream to be able to work with you and the others. So, thank you for giving me that chance.”

He might still feel a little guilty around Haruka, especially when she is the one apologizing after she’s pretty much the one who got him into STARISH with the others, but he puts his hand on her shoulder. He doesn’t have to be alone anymore, and he’s already repaired a lot of the bridges he smashed while at Saotome Academy. If she helped him grow back then, when he wasn’t receptive to help, he figures it would be dumb to refuse now.

“I’m sorry for ruining your first dream,” he says. 

When she smiles up at him, he figures he’s probably managed to repair that bridge, if only a little bit.


	13. The Symphony for Dream Chasers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tokiya has to work on his birthday, but Otoya is still determined to make it the best thing he's ever experienced.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had a bad week, so have a new chapter.
> 
> I struggled a lot with the title for this one, because the song barely discussed in this is Yume Oibito he no Symphony (The Symphony for Dream Chasers), but I wrote the chapter listening to Mamoru Miyano's Thank You. So, if that one jives better with you, feel free to pretend that's the title.
> 
> Also, I can't take credit for any of the stuff that happens on the game show; all of the activities are taken from an old Japanese game show that I used to watch as a kid. Even the proposal thing (the reactions are all my own though; I didn't rip that much off from it).

STARISH’s second full single, Yume Oibito he no Symphony, debuts at #1 on the charts, and the next week, they are invited to participate on Shining TV, a game show hosted by the Shining Agency. It’s a fantastic publicity opportunity, and Quartet Night is invited in order to round out the teams, as well as to keep them in their little squads. 

Tokiya just wishes the taping wasn’t on his birthday.

It’s not that he’s against working on his birthday or anything, but the crestfallen look on Otoya’s face when he realizes it is heartbreaking. The redhead promises to make it special still, and Tokiya figures he has plenty more birthdays to celebrate. This one doesn’t have to be perfection.

They have to be on their way to the studio at 5:45 in the morning, which means Otoya has to be cajoled into getting up. If there’s one time that he isn’t his normal cheerful self, it’s in the mornings. Tokiya has always been a morning person, but Otoya will stay up late at night with no repercussions, so long as he is allowed to sleep in until a decent hour.

Tokiya and Reiji manage to get him into clothes and throw him into the back of the van. Reiji is driving, which Tokiya knows from experience is going to be a terrifying experience, so he slides into the back next to Otoya, figuring he won’t be able to see the danger. The redhead dozes against his shoulder, which is fine until Masato and Ranmaru throw Ren in the back as well, and he starts sleeping against Tokiya’s other shoulder. He “accidentally” elbows Ren’s stomach to wake him up. 

Otoya is still asleep when they get out of the van an hour and a half later at the studio, and he snoozes through both Tokiya and Reiji getting their makeup and styling done. Eventually, the makeup artist for their group takes him into the back, and when Otoya returns, he is wide awake, wishing Tokiya a happy birthday and chattering excitedly about their tasks for the day.

They’ve been broken into their groups for the Masters Course (not that the audience knows this; on the surface, they’ve been broken up randomly with a member of Quartet Night placed in each of the four groups) to compete for a cash prize. They are given the name of Team ROT when Reiji says it to one of the producers, who then forces the other three teams to choose one. The other teams take after them: CC for Cecil and Camus, RMR for Ranmaru, Masato, and Ren, and ANS for Ai, Natsuki, and Syo, even after Ren points out that if Natsuki was Satsuki, they could be team ASS. Ai very quickly stomps on his foot for even saying such a thing out loud.

Tokiya can’t say he’s particularly excited—gameshows are famous for making people do stupid things—but the excitement of the group is infectious, and he’s not _not_ looking forward to it, beyond one of the producers knowing it’s his birthday and being told he is going to be receiving a surprise onstage because of it.

The surprise ends up being Quartet Night and the remainder of STARISH singing a rendition of Happy Birthday to him while he stands in the center with a crown on his head, so he figures that went about as well as it could have. 

Once they are all introduced, the tasks begin. Camus and Cecil beat everyone else at a “three-legged race”, since they’re the only ones who don’t have a person in the middle completely at the mercy of the people on the sides (he and Reiji had attempted to put Otoya in the middle so that they could lift him in the hopes of making it easier and ended up falling more times than they took a step). There is an impromptu haiku contest that Masato unsurprisingly slaughters everyone in, although it’s humorous to watch Syo say a line and then count the syllables to realize he has too many. Tokiya takes place in a contest to keep the straightest face against Ai, Ranmaru, and Camus (and wins, probably to no one’s surprise; he’s had too much practice with his roommates to lose to such amateurs). Otoya pushes Reiji in a supermarket cart race and both wipe out so spectacularly that they have to call for medics to make sure they’re both okay. 

The host of the games then says something about marriage, and Tokiya wonders what exactly they’re going to be forced to do next when he announces that the members of Quartet Night are going to pick a member of their teams to wear something special. Tokiya’s already worn a crown, a fireman’s hat, and the most bizarre birdhouse hat so far, so he’s ready when he feels the piece of clothing hit his head.

And then a piece of white gauzy fabric hits his face. “It’s a wedding veil!” the host exclaims before launching into the explanation of their task. Each of the non-veil-wearing members of STARISH will have to figure out the best way to “propose” to their veil-wearing partners. “It’s time to make some girls’ dreams come true!” he cackles, and if it weren’t him in the veil, Tokiya might have chuckled.

But he is.

He can see Otoya cast a surprised look at Reiji before lapsing into a thinking position. 

Syo and Natsuki are first, and Natsuki is wearing the veil because Ai isn’t that evil. Syo is kind of red, but he gets on one knee and very formally asks Natsuki for his hand in marriage, which is kind of cute, but not particularly original. Natsuki is the star of that one though, because he starts jumping around like Syo has actually asked him, lifting Syo up in a hug that makes the rest of them laugh.

Next is Ren proposing to a veiled Masato, and both look like they’re struggling to hold back their laughter before they even start, which is strange for the two. Even the host asks if they’re okay, which only makes the two lose it, Masato waving his hand in his face to keep his eyeliner from smudging. As soon as they’ve composed themselves, thanks in part to Ranmaru’s stern stare, Ren takes Masato’s hand and says, “if you marry me, I’ll make sure you keep laughing.” Which, bizarrely, makes Masato stop laughing.

And then it’s his and Otoya’s turn.

Tokiya supposes that Reiji chose Otoya for this because he knows Otoya will give it his all and as they step up to the riser in the center of the stage, there is a determined look on the redhead’s face. He puts his hands on Tokiya’s shoulders, and there’s a weird feeling of weight to his stare, as if he’s about to confess something for real, and then he looks down quickly. “This is kind of embarrassing, isn’t it?” he asks with a mild laugh. The audience chuckles and Tokiya fails to hold back a snort, which makes Otoya laugh again. “Okay, let’s give this a try,” he says when he composes himself. “I can do this. Um . . .”

“Are you nervous?” Tokiya asks him incredulously.

“You try proposing to someone spontaneously!” Otoya says, blushing. “I mean, you’re my best friend, and there’s a lot of things I want to say, like how I enjoy spending time with you or how I admire your dedication and passion or even how I feel grateful when you let Rei-chan and I do something ridiculous and just go with it even though you know it’s a bad idea! Which one am I supposed to go with?”

He throws up his hands in frustration, but the collective “aww” that the audience makes is one of complete and utter rapture. Just by being himself, Otoya has once again managed to charm an entire set of people without even intending to. Tokiya can feel his cheeks heat up and his chest ache in a way that he has to put his hand over his heart to make sure it’s still there.

“Get on one knee!” Reiji hisses, and when Otoya turns to him with a bewildered look on his face, he goes over to push the redhead down. 

Understanding finally dawns over Otoya’s face, and he displays the ring with a cheesy smile. “Marry me?”

Tokiya can’t help it; he puts his face in his hands to hide his blush. Even if he weren’t “smitten” with Otoya, as Ren put it, that display was so weirdly charming that he probably wouldn’t be able to keep a straight face. The audience cheers, Reiji claps in excitement because he’s convinced they’ve won the round, and the host calls them “absolutely precious” before ushering them back to their space so that Cecil can propose to what looks like a random audience member.

Otoya sidles up to Tokiya and wraps his arm around his waist, and Tokiya just shakes his head before reciprocating the gesture.

They win that challenge but lose the cash prize to Team ANS in the final round, where Reiji insists he can win it for their team only to find out that the challenge is an obstacle course and the opposing team has chosen Syo for their participant. The time difference between the two is enormous, Team ROT gets slaughtered, but they do win a little bit of money as the audience favorite, which they turn around and spend on a teppanyaki dinner after they get cleaned up and away from the studio.

Tokiya finds that it’s his favorite birthday he’s ever had, spending time with STARISH and Quartet Night while they laugh at the different things they had to do during the game show. Ren does an impression of Masato during the supermarket cart race that has the rest of them howling, minus the person in question, who slaps him with his napkin and threatens further retribution later. Reiji almost gets them kicked out when he pranks Ranmaru into getting too close to the grill and nearly catches the rocker’s jacket on fire. They sing him happy birthday again, and because Tokiya’s strict diet doesn’t allow for cake, Reiji presents him with a tomato with a candle in it, which makes him lose his composure for a second just because of how funny it is.

And then he blows out the candle and makes a wish.

Like he does _every_ birthday, Natsuki asks what the wish was, and Syo scolds him that if he says, the wish won’t come true, and they have an existential crisis that Tokiya’s pretty sure they have every time someone blows out the candle on their birthday on whether the candle grants the wish with magic or whether the people wishing grant their own wishes with hard work. Cecil and Ai continue to debate this in the corner far after the rest of them have moved on from the topic.

Eventually, they all load back up in the van and drive the hour and a half back to the Shining Agency dormitories, although Otoya pulls him aside as soon as they get out and suggests they take a walk before returning to go to bed. They promise Reiji they’ll see him up there after he returns the van and set off down the small path away from their living quarters.

The Shining Agency campus is somewhat large, and it’s lavish, with a small pond and fountain that the path meanders around. It’s already dark, and the lanterns light their way with gentle yellow beams. “I don’t think I’ve walked this in the dark before,” Tokiya says as he looks around. It’s all different in the dark, serene in its silence but also seemingly endless. 

“I have, when I can’t sleep. It’s a nice walk. But there’s one place I like to hang out more than everywhere else. Come on,” he says, spurring their leisurely pace just a little faster.

Otoya’s place is at the top of the hill at the back of the area, which almost reaches the top of the campus buildings, but more importantly, is tall enough to see over the stone fence. The lights of Tokyo greet them, twinkling like the stars they can’t see in the sky. It’s a bizarre combination of action and stillness, of a reminder that they are alone and still a cog in the same large machine that the rest of the world is. Tokiya feels both important and insignificant at the same time. He glances over to see the most peaceful expression he’s ever seen on Otoya’s face as he looks down over the city. “It’s nice,” he says, staring out over the skyscape and trying to figure out where all of the different Tokyo wards are in his head.

“Whenever I lose faith in myself, I come up here. Every one of the people out there could be struggling, you know? And if there’s anything I can do to make their lives a little easier or a little happier, then it doesn’t matter how discouraged I feel.” 

The world does not deserve Otoya Ittoki, Tokiya muses. And yet, he understands what the redhead is saying. They spend so much of their days on the Shining Agency campus that it’s hard to remember that there’s anything outside of it, and yet, the people on the outside are the most important part of their chosen profession. They are the listeners and the fans who look forward to their new releases and listen to their old ones on repeat. They allow STARISH to be a part of their daily routines in myriad small ways, and it does empower him to remember that. 

“I know that HAYATO still haunts you,” he continues, “and he’s a part of your past, so that makes him a part of who you were. But who you were and who you are now are two different people, aren’t they? You’re _Tokiya_.”

“I am.” It’s easy for him to admit that now, having seen the changes in his behavior. He takes a deep breath and looks over the city for courage. “I’m afraid that HAYATO is the most successful I’ll ever be because back then, I had something to offer. I’m not sure what Tokiya Ichinose has to offer anyone.”

“I think about that too,” Otoya admits, and Tokiya looks over at him in confusion. “I mean, I don’t have HAYATO to compare myself to or anything, but some days I look at myself and wonder what I do for STARISH. You’re incredible at singing and Masa is good at lyrics, and Syo is an incredible dancer, like wow. And Natsuki keeps things from getting too heavy and Ren has all of the sex appeal of the group, which leaves Cecil to be the charming one to the audience, and I don’t know where I fit in a lot of the time. But I try to remind myself that you guys seem to want me in the group, and if it makes you happy, then maybe that’s what I have to offer.”

“You definitely have stuff to offer STARISH—” Tokiya starts, but Otoya shakes his head and cuts him off.

“—My point is that maybe you don’t know what you have to offer, but what you’re offering already makes me happy, so I think it makes other people happy too. You’re offering Tokiya to the world, and I, for one, really like Tokiya.”

The earnest smile on Otoya’s face has him shaking his head to try to hide his expression. He shuffles closer so that their arms are touching, and Otoya leans into him. “That’s what you think, huh?”

“I do. And I don’t think anyone would blame you for wanting to be better than you were as HAYATO. But I think you already are.”

“I used to hate you, you know?” Tokiya says, unable to keep it back any longer. “You reminded me of HAYATO, but you were always _better_ without even trying. It was like watching my failures get shoved in my face. But you’re not HAYATO either.”

“You don’t hate me anymore, right?” Otoya asks, looking concerned.

Tokiya can’t help his snort. “Not at all.”

A smile spreads across Otoya’s features. “Happy birthday, Tokiya,” he says, and he raises himself up on his tiptoes to press his lips to Tokiya’s, hands resting on either side of his neck. Tokiya responds and revels in the heat that rises into his chest and face. He’s kissed a stunned Otoya and a shy Otoya, but enthusiastic Otoya is his new favorite. All of the normal exuberance that the redhead normally has is channeled into his mouth, and it’s almost overwhelming to have that much attention on him. 

They kiss until Tokiya has to break away for air, and between gasps, Otoya places kisses on everywhere he can reach along his jawline and neck. They’re light, but they feel like he’s been burned in those places as the cool air hits the remnants of the saliva left behind. Once his breathing has returned to normal, Tokiya crushes their lips together again. 

By the time they walk back down the hill, both of them are red and disheveled. “We should talk about this. But not yet,” Tokiya says as they near the dorms.

“Yeah,” Otoya agrees. 

They nod at each other, and Tokiya can’t help but stare after his roommate as he throws himself inside of the dorm, tacking the awaiting Reiji with all of his bodyweight. 

Maybe he doesn’t know what he wants yet, but there’s an alarm that’s been thrown in the back of his mind that tells him that he’s getting close.


	14. Independence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who in the world is Tokiya Ichinose?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a couple of you noted, we're starting to wind down, so please, have the chapter that this entire fic was written for. If I've told you that I had to get Tokiya into a very specific position, welcome to said very specific position.
> 
> Hopefully this meets your expectations.

As the summer jobs finish up, Reiji reveals to them that there’s a little more than six months before graduation, and also, there’s a “short list” of stuff they haven’t completed for the program.

“Excuse me?!” Tokiya asks when Reiji sets down the list of required activities. It’s not short at all. “And you’re telling me we should have been working on these for the last year and a half?!”

Reiji smiles and shrugs as if to say, “my bad”. 

So, they cram a lot of activities into the autumn months. Tokiya and Otoya spend almost a month with the composers course, learning how they compose music, and then on to production and post-production to learn those things before finally moving along to mentoring students at Saotome Academy for their exams. Tokiya gets assigned a student from the A class who is too timid to think of lyrics, let alone sing anything, and Otoya gets a stuck-up S class student who disparages him at every turn. If not for Otoya’s warning glare, Tokiya would have intervened, but Otoya insists that he has it, and the student passes the first exam, so either Otoya got through to him or they worked something out.

And with winter comes Christmas and the events surrounding that. STARISH gets invited to events, Quartet Night comes along, and it’s fun. Tokiya sings a rendition of _All I Want for Christmas is You_ after being requested from a host and then is criticized for his English, which has Otoya immediately defending him. Reiji dresses up in a Santa Claus costume on Christmas morning and starts tossing presents at them at an ungodly hour for even Tokiya’s standards.

Tokiya even manages to steal a quick kiss under the mistletoe, much to a certain redhead’s embarrassment. 

Once the new year starts, it’s back to business to finish up their course. They have three months to complete their final songs: one solo and one group. Haruka starts on the arrangement for their group song immediately while they agonize over their solo songs.

“This is your one chance to show the world what you’re all about. You’ve both grown a lot in here,” Reiji says as they sit at the kotatsu after the assignment has been given. This is a serious conversation, and Reiji’s normal smile is absent. “I also want you both to know that this is where a lot of groups break up. Record deals start rolling in; your contract with Shining Agency ends with the Masters Course. You’ll probably get solo offers as well as group offers, so your solo song is just as important.”

“What do you mean they ‘break up’?” Otoya asks, panic evident in his voice.

“They dissolve. One of the members gets a solo deal, and the rest of them usually don’t just band together without them. You both will do great solo if that’s what happens,” he says. “But I think you want STARISH to continue, don’t you?”

There are tears in Otoya’s eyes at the thought of breaking up, so obviously he does, and when Reiji’s stare turns to him, Tokiya admits that while he had originally had the idea of a solo career, he enjoys being part of STARISH. It’s weird to him to think of _not_ having the others nearby, and the ache in his chest reminds him of the hotel room in Nagoya.

“I do,” he says. 

But the others are another story. No one is willing to bring it up though, so Tokiya just watches for the small signs of malcontent among the others as they vent to each other after group practices and during the occasional dinner. 

There is so much pressure that Tokiya doesn’t know what to do. The lyrics aren’t coming to him; he’s not sure what Tokiya Ichinose “is all about”, and when he says that to Syo and Ren as they warm up for a dance practice, they both look surprised.

“Mr. Perfect not having lyrics?” Syo asks with a raised eyebrow. “Man, I thought I was stressing, but I guess we all are, aren’t we?”

“Run out of textbooks to steal lines from or something?” Ren asks, obviously continuing on his mild attacks on Tokiya’s lyrical style being too clinical.

“Haha, very funny,” Tokiya deadpans.

“Really though,” Syo says as he stretches out his hamstrings. “It’s kind of nice to see you struggle with something for once. I mean, you were always the honor student and you’ve had a successful idol career before.”

“Oi, Ochibi-chan. Did you forget how Icchi was kicked out of class?” Ren reminds him. 

“I’m never opening up to you again,” Tokiya says to him in annoyance.

Ren shrugs. “You both are taking this way too seriously. You can’t write a song that’s all about you when you’re worried about who you are.”

“Yeah, well, figuring it out in three months with all of this pressure isn’t the easiest thing,” Tokiya grumbles.

“I’ve been doing stream of consciousness writing,” Syo says. “Masato taught it to me. Basically, you just write down everything you’re thinking and pick through the good stuff at the end.”

Ren startles, and for a moment, they both look at him in confusion, but he just says, “Masa taught you that? I taught it to him! He’s taking credit for my stuff?!” before storming off to confront his roommate.

Tokiya and Syo both shake their heads at each other with a sigh.

He decides to try the stream of consciousness thing, setting an alarm for early in the morning so that he can do it with a fresh brain, and when it rings at 3am, he slides out of bed to find that Otoya’s bed is still untouched. 

The redhead is slumped over the table, his guitar discarded to the side and a messily scribbled song in front of him. There are eraser marks and pencil smears all over, so obviously it wasn’t a smooth process. He raises his head as Tokiya walks in, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand and pasting on a sleepy smile. “What are you doing up?”

“It’s three in the morning. What are you still doing out here?”

“I think I finally wrote my solo song. Maybe. I’ve written three different ones so far,” he admits. “This one still needs work, but I think I’m going to go with it.”

“You should sleep then,” Tokiya says, holding out his hand to help Otoya up. The momentum sends Otoya sailing into his chest, and for a moment, they just hold each other. The redhead is obviously tired by the way he melts into Tokiya, and he knows those dark circles under his eyes aren’t just for show.

“I’m scared,” Otoya says, his voice slightly muffled by Tokiya’s sweatshirt.

Tokiya gathers him up tighter in his arms in response. “It’s going to be okay.”

“What if STARISH breaks up?”

He doesn’t have an answer. He rubs his thumb along Otoya’s spine instead to try to soothe him. “You’ll still have me,” he says finally.

Otoya pulls back to look up at Tokiya. “Promise?” he asks, holding up his pinky. 

Of course Otoya would still believe in the sanctity of a pinky swear. Tokiya hooks his finger around his roommate’s. “Promise.”

They extract their hands from each other, and Tokiya rubs at his chin where Otoya’s hair had tickled. It’s not until he realizes that Otoya’s frozen, looking at him with his eyebrows raised to his hairline that he recognizes that something’s wrong. “What?”

He motions to Tokiya’s jaw before looking down at his own hand, which Tokiya belatedly realizes is grey with graphite smears. 

“That’s all over my face, isn’t it?” he asks.

One harried nod later and he pushes Otoya towards the bathroom to wash up before bed before cleaning himself up over the kitchen sink. He wants to be angry with Otoya, but he’s not. He just tries to remember to replace those pencils with pens next time he’s at the store.

Then again, the next time they’ll shop is likely after their graduation from the Masters Course. Will it even matter then? He’s just promised he’d stay with Otoya, but if they were solo artists at different recording companies, they wouldn’t have a choice. Even roommates might not be possible. The thought makes him feel hollow, and he pushes it out of his mind as he sits down at the kotatsu.

It’s time to focus on his lyrics. Stream of consciousness and all of that. The blank page is intimidating, but once he forces himself to start writing down anything that comes to mind, it starts flowing. There’s a lot of fears in there, probably incited by the recent conversation with Otoya, along with a lot of frustration at his own inabilities to write a decent song. The more he writes, the more irritated he gets, not just with his song, but with his entire image. Syo had called him “Mr. Perfect” earlier, but Tokiya feels like anything but. He’s been stumbling around for a long time and apparently faking that he knows what he’s doing. 

The worst part is that he’s been blindly pursuing everything in his life. He’s been rushing into his idol career to avoid HAYATO without any plan, and that’s sent him into so many different opportunities that he’s not sure what to go for. He wouldn’t have been friends with Otoya without Reiji steering him in the right direction, he wouldn’t have been with STARISH if it hadn’t been for Haruka encouraging him, and he probably wouldn’t have made it through this Masters Course without any of his bandmates. They’re always there to help him out when he deserves it least, coaxing him out of his shell even though he hasn’t had much to offer. 

He wants to change.

He scribbles all of this down and gets almost five pages of nonsense before Otoya emerges from the bathroom, flopping on the couch opposite where Tokiya sits under the kotatsu. “I won’t bother you, will I?” he asks, already burrowing under the blankets he’s brought from the bedroom. 

“Nope. Go to sleep.”

“’Night.”

Otoya’s eyes watch him for a few minutes before they start to close, and he’s asleep before Tokiya has started eliminating some of the prose from the second page. Tokiya knows these kinds of nights, or he’d force Otoya to sleep in his bed, since Reiji is bound to wake him up when he comes into the living room, but the nights that things are weighing so heavily on the redhead’s mind that he can’t sleep often culminate in nightmares of being alone. They’re not new fears, but Otoya had admitted it was easier to come down from them when he could look over and see Tokiya sleeping in the other bed when they were sharing the dorm. Suspended in the upper bunk, it’s harder to see any forms of life, and there are nights that Tokiya has woken up because the entire bunk bed is shaking with how hard Otoya is trembling.

So, he lets Otoya sleep where if he opens his eyes, he can see Tokiya toiling over his paper, and to be fair, it helps Tokiya too. His entire life post-HAYATO has been ambling towards some vague definition of success, and he’s pretty sure one of the reasons he’s so lost about his future is because there is no concrete endpoint. Otoya is something tangible, and while Tokiya still hasn’t figured out his feelings for his roommate, he’s become something akin to a lighthouse showing him the way towards land if he gets too lost.

He finishes crossing out anything that feels too transitory or inauthentic and sits back with the revised copy, trying to figure out where to go with it. There’s a lot of anger in it, which isn’t necessarily what he wants to express.

But what does he want to express?

He stares at Otoya, watching the redhead sleep in the dregs of light from the lamp aimed over the kotatsu. He is beautiful, with his thick eyelashes and flawless porcelain skin no matter how much junk he eats. There is a graceful slope to his neck and shoulders, and Tokiya’s gaze lingers on the collarbones exposed by his loose scoopneck t-shirt. The way that the shadows pool in the hollows of his throat brings Tokiya back to when the redhead was helping Ren with the dance for Dear . . . Burning my Lady. The sensual dance had made Tokiya’s mouth go dry and had completely turned the way he’d thought about his roommate upside down, even though he’d blamed it on hormones for a good two months so that he could be in denial for a little longer. There is a physicality to Otoya that Tokiya can’t resist, and he wants to explore that and run his fingers along all of the planes of Otoya’s body in order to investigate the source.

Tokiya briefly wonders if Otoya has ever felt the same about him and pretty much immediately discards that thought. He is far too serious to have ever been traditionally sexy, nor has he ever really wanted to be to anyone until now. He wouldn’t know the first thing about starting either, so without assistance (likely from Ren, meaning that Tokiya would rather die than admit his shortcomings in that area), he probably isn’t going to achieve that.

Tokiya can’t help the groan that comes out of his mouth. Instead of a song about who he is, he just seems to have a long list of things that he isn’t: perfect, genuine, honest, or sexy. He’s off to a great start.

He’s accepted his fate as an eternal emotionless mannequin by the time Reiji wakes up and comes into the living room. “I hear the wheels spinning,” he says in a sing-song voice, which makes Otoya stir but not wake.

Tokiya shushes him.

His mentor eventually gets him into the kitchen with the smell of breakfast, and he perches at the tiny island as he watches Reiji cook. “I can’t write this solo song,” he says.

“Can’t is a very strong word.”

“I don’t think you understand. I can’t show who I _am_ if I am nothing. All I’ve got is a list of things that don’t fit me at all.”

Reiji pauses to take a bite of a raw red pepper, and the crunch is loud enough that Tokiya can hear Otoya turn over on the couch, but it’s a testament to just how tired he is that he doesn’t wake up. “Who says we _are_ anything, Tokki?”

“You did. When you gave us this assignment.”

“Isn’t that just a turn of phrase? ‘Show the world who you are’?”

“Can we not play the whole riddle game this morning, please?” Tokiya begs. “I’m not in the mood.”

“If you asked Otoyan to describe himself, what do you think he’d say?” Reiji asks, the look in his eyes showing that this is a serious question.

Otoya describing himself is . . . an odd mental picture. He doubts that Otoya would say anything about how hardworking or determined he is, or how much of a uniting force he can be. Instead, he’d go with facts like he’s working to become an idol and his favorite color and stuff.

“He’d talk about the things he likes, I guess.”

“Right. But you and I describing him would definitely describe him differently, wouldn’t we? I mean, the kid’s the reincarnation of a golden retriever, let’s be honest.”

Tokiya can’t help but chuckle at the mental image, but he can’t say that Reiji is wrong. “Yeah. We’d talk about his traits.”

“We don’t think about our own traits well.” Reiji cracks a couple of eggs into a cup and whisks them as he talks. “But doesn’t that mean that we are the things that we aren’t not?”

Reiji’s wordplay has Tokiya’s head spinning like a top. “Rephrase that, please.”

“If you’re not something, you’re not. But if you’re not _not_ something, according to logic, you are. Maybe the only way we ever learn who we are is through figuring out the things that we’re not.”

Tokiya is still confused, but Reiji chooses that moment to forget that the cupboard that holds the trash can slams shut, and Otoya bolts up from the couch. “What happened?” he asks.

“Sorry, Otoyan. Do you want breakfast?”

Otoya gets up, although he ends up dozing against Tokiya’s shoulder five minutes later anyways as Reiji finishes up cooking, and Tokiya just figures he’ll have to think about it.

So he does.

And he does.

And he does some more.

And then it finally hits him. 

It wasn’t a riddle with an answer. Reiji literally told him the answer; he needs to explore the things that he’s not before he can figure out what he is. And with that in mind, he scrawls down a song that is so different from anything else he’s ever done, he almost can’t believe he wrote it. 

The day of recording feels weird. On one hand, Tokiya is nervous. It’s the first time Reiji and Otoya won’t be in the recording booth to cheer him on; Reiji isn’t allowed and Otoya has been scheduled in a different booth for the same time. Neither of them has shared their songs with the other yet, although Tokiya knows he wants Otoya to be the first to listen to it. On the other hand, it feels so nice to be able to get the whole thing over with after three months of agonizing.

Reiji wishes them both luck before they walk through the double doors for the recording studio, and when they reach the end of the hall, Otoya places his hands on Tokiya’s shoulders. “You can do it,” he says, but his smile wavers a little in his own nervousness. “Just let go of all of that emotional constipation.”

“Eloquent way to put that,” Tokiya says without annoyance, because as ineloquent as it is, it’s fairly accurate. Besides, Otoya’s nerves are just as bad as Tokiya’s are. He supposes he can’t give Otoya hell for throwing up before recording Hyper x Super x Lover anymore, since he did the same exact thing this morning.

“Just show the world Tokiya Ichinose. They’ll like you.”

“You already do?” Tokiya guesses with a gentle smile.

“I do.”

Tokiya decides he wants to kiss him, whether it’s for good luck or to focus on something other than the thoughts in his head or even for courage, and once he looks around the corridors to make sure no one’s there, he does. Otoya grips at his wrist as if to keep him there for another second longer, and then they pull away from each other. “Go knock them out,” Tokiya murmurs. “Pretend I’ll be in the room watching you if that will help.”

“I will,” Otoya promises.

Tokiya realizes that his previous fear is gone. There’s still a lot of anxiety gnawing at his stomach, but there’s something about Otoya’s quiet resolve that focuses him. He takes a deep breath, lets it out, and then looks at his roommate. “Time to go show the world who Tokiya Ichinose is.”

Otoya’s smile spreads across his face. “I’ll be waiting to hear it,” he promises.

And then they turn and walk away from each other, entering their separate recording booths.

It takes the tech a few minutes to adjust the microphone and such to him, and then he’s singing. The first take is tight and riddled with nerves, but he shakes it off for the second take, the lyrics reminding him of his resolve to change. By the time he starts the third take, which he instinctively knows is going to be the best one, it feels a bit like he’s ripped his heart from his chest and held it next to a candle. His entire body feels like it’s alight with a nervous energy that crackles through his veins. He leans into the feeling and uses it to power his voice. _This_ is the Tokiya Ichinose he’s chosen to be.

The Tokiya Ichinose that wants to keep changing and evolving. The Tokiya Ichinose that wants independence from not only his HAYATO persona, but the persona he was before everything that’s happened to him now happened. The cold, perfect persona, the one that kept everyone at a distance, the one who hated Otoya Ittoki with everything he had because of a jealousy and competition that was all in his mind. 

When he finishes singing, he feels like his limbs are as weak as cooked pasta, but he still manages to get into the recording booth to listen to the finished product.

For the first time, when he listens to his own song, he doesn’t disparage it and pick it apart. The emotions are front and center to the point that it eclipses any of the technical details. It doesn’t matter that he occasionally goes sharp when he hits the falsetto. What matters is that this is him, laid out bare for anyone to hear.

It’s both terrifying and liberating.

He makes sure to thank the tech before walking back to where Reiji waits, feeling like he’s in a daze. “All done?” Reiji asks, standing.

Tokiya nods and drops into a low bow. “Thank you,” he says, and for once, he means it.

“I knew you’d come around at some point,” Reiji says with a giant smile on his face. “No chance you’re going to call me Rei-chan yet, is there?”

“Not going to happen, Kotobuki.” Tokiya lets out the breath he’s seemingly been holding as Reiji declines to make their interaction emotional. 

The door behind them opens and Otoya comes out, looking drained. His face is pale and the smile he gives them isn’t very big, but Tokiya can feel the same sort of equilibrium from him that he’s reached. After a minute, the redhead gathers them both up for a group hug.

“Need a war cry?” Reiji asks, and they both nod. “R!”

“O!”

“T!”

“Now, let’s feed you both and get you to bed! It’s been a long day.” He takes their hands like they’re little kids, and Tokiya lets him lead the way, too tired to do anything else.

He had entered the recording booth one person, but left a different one, and when he looks at his two roommates, and Natsuki, Syo, and Ai as they pass them in the hall, Tokiya thinks it’s for the best.


	15. HORIZON

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Independence has changed Tokiya, and now it's time for him to reach for what he wants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here's our final real chapter of Independence. Next chapter is the epilogue. Thank you so much to everyone who's stuck with me through this; I started off this story feeling like shit about my writing and somehow I'm feeling a lot better about it now.
> 
> Also, getting these two to talk about their feelings was not easy, and I commend anyone who does it.

Tokiya sleeps for fourteen hours, and when he wakes up again, it’s time to record their group final. Maji LOVE 2000% is even more energetic than the original, and when they get into the recording booth, it’s fairly obvious that he’s not the only one who has been changed by singing a single song. There is a weird current of something close to hope that seems to be thrumming around the room, pushing them to greater heights and more emotion than Tokiya thinks he could ever manage to muster up on his own.

And then they’ve completed the Masters Course.

There’s a week of grading and previews with different recording companies, and the offers start rolling in before they’ve even gotten their singles back from post-processing. Tokiya receives a solo offer first, but Otoya receives three the next day. The STARISH offers also come to them, as Tokiya had offered to be the contact, and he and Otoya stare at the different papers scattered across the tabletop with trepidation.

Eventually, they get the call that everything has been graded, and they’re welcome to pick up a copy of their work. Otoya picks up theirs on his way home from his vocal lessons and Tokiya awaits his return with his laptop ready to go. 

They exchange discs, headphones plugged in, and with a nod at each other, they listen to each other’s songs. 

Otoya’s song, HORIZON, has a far more mature feel to it than anything else Tokiya’s heard him record. It’s complicated in a musical sense but he makes it sound effortless, and when he hits the high D over and over again with conviction and strength, Tokiya feels pride. The song is Otoya in a way that describes his dogged persistence and commitment to excellence, and the lyrics are wonderfully uplifting too, despite the minor key that the instrumentals are in. Otoya’s voice sounds like the light cutting through the darkness and, seeing as Tokiya had recently described him as his personal lighthouse, it’s so fitting that it takes his breath away.

Tokiya stares at his roommate with a mixture of awe and adoration, watching different emotions play out over his face as he listens to Independence. “This is . . .“ he says after he takes off his headphones, his mouth making movements but no sound coming out. “Tokiya.”

“Otoya,” he responds back, equally speechless, and after a moment of staring at each other, they shake their heads and laugh. “This is amazing.”

“That’s nothing,” Otoya says, motioning to his CD. “Yours on the other hand . . . wow.”

They listen to Maji LOVE 2000% together and agree that it’s the more cheerful of them and probably the best for an audience. The other two are too emotionally charged for easy listening, and Tokiya agrees with Otoya’s evaluation that it was way more fun to record too.

“We need to make a decision on those,” he eventually says, referring to the stack of offers. 

Otoya’s face falls and his eyes drop to the surface of the table. “I’m a little scared to hear what the others are thinking,” he admits.

“Yeah,” he agrees. All of them had gone to Saotome Academy with the intent to create a solo career after all. Just because he and Otoya prefer STARISH doesn’t mean that the others will, and the idea of being STARISH without any of its seven members doesn’t feel right. 

Otoya fishes his phone from his pocket and taps out a message. “We all need to get together to talk about it,” he says, and in the group chat, they arrange a meeting the next day.

Tokiya doesn’t have a good feeling about it.

They both insist Reiji listen to their singles when he gets home, and he starts making cooing noises like a proud parent at Otoya’s progress, but when he listens to Tokiya’s, his eyebrows meet his hairline in surprise. “Well, Tokki. I didn’t think you had that in you,” he eventually chokes out. “It’s . . . it’s good,” he reassures him. “I just . . . that’s not what I expected at all.”

“It feels like Tokiya though,” Otoya says, and Reiji nods after a moment of contemplation.

“It really does,” he says and nods at Tokiya with his fond smile in his eyes. That only lasts a moment though before the mischievous expression creeps back. “You know, other than the whole sexy part of the song. How risqué! How could you let your sempai listen to that?!” he asks, dropping to the floor in a mock swoon.

Tokiya kicks him in the ribs.

They go out to dinner to celebrate at Reiji’s insistence, and then sit around the kotatsu for long enough that Tokiya knows he should be tired when he lays in his bed, but he can’t sleep. He just keeps thinking of their group meeting tomorrow and how it could change everything. STARISH is something he knows for sure that he wants in his life, and now that it can be taken away from him, it seems cruel.

“Tokiya?” 

The hissed whisper comes from above him, and Tokiya isn’t surprised. “I can’t sleep either,” he replies, and Otoya climbs down the ladder as Tokiya flips his blanket and scoots back against the wall to make room. The bed is a little small for both of them, so they have to get close, but Tokiya doesn’t really mind it when it’s Otoya. 

He waits for the redhead to get situated before he speaks again; after all, they’re trying not to wake Reiji up. “What do you think will happen tomorrow?”

Otoya’s face is grim in the tiny sliver of light from the window. “I don’t know. I mean, I think we all like each other, but maybe I’m just kidding myself.”

“You’re not,” he says. “No matter what, I don’t think this will be a thing of not being friends after all of this is over. This is a business thing, not a personal thing.” He gives into the urge to brush some of Otoya’s hair from his eyes in reassurance. 

“You don’t mind staying with STARISH, do you?”

His voice is so small and unsure that Tokiya’s heart feels like it’s breaking. “I’d like STARISH to continue,” he says resolutely. “And I will be advocating for it tomorrow.”

Otoya doesn’t respond, instead burrowing further into the pillow.

Tokiya takes the hand resting between them, winding his pinky around Otoya’s. “Promise, remember?” he asks.

Otoya lets out the breath he’s been holding. “Promise,” he murmurs, and captures Tokiya’s hand in both of his. He squeezes, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to feel his desperation. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Tokiya murmurs, and it causes Otoya to release enough tension that he says it over and over again, until Otoya is asleep and Tokiya is left holding his hand. The extra warmth makes him feel sleepy despite his heavy chest, and he drifts off to sleep not long after too.

 

STARISH assembles the next day, and it feels like no one’s quite sure what to say. They sit crosslegged in a circle under one of the larger trees, Masato thinking ahead to bring a blanket for them to sit on. It’s a little crowded, and Tokiya has to raise his knees so that Otoya can rest his under, but at least he has plenty of room on the side that Syo sits on. Natsuki brought cookies, but no one tries them, particularly after his roommate makes hand gestures to avoid them.

“I’m not entirely sure how to start,” Masato says finally. “I assume we’ve received offers as STARISH.”

Tokiya pulls the opened envelopes out of his bag, tossing them over. Ren peers over Masato’s shoulder, making a noise in his throat that Tokiya’s not quite sure whether it’s good or bad. He and Masato had talked briefly about the salary ranges they’d received, and while STARISH is a pay cut, he doesn’t feel like it’s too bad of one. He can feel Otoya tense up beside him, and he catches his eye to reassure him.

The letters get passed around to Cecil, Natsuki, and Syo, and then they all just sit there, staring at each other.

“I have something to say!” Otoya blurts out, his resolve to stay quiet and let them talk it out obviously breaking. “I really love being part of STARISH! And I love being with you guys, and I feel like I get so much better whenever I work with you. And I know we’ll try to stay close even if we go solo, but it’s not going to be the same. So . . .” He trails off, looking at his knees, and Tokiya is torn between trying to comfort him and looking around at the expressions of the others.

“Otoya!” Cecil says, tackling the redhead in a hug. “You’re gonna make me cry!”

Natsuki immediately crawls over to join the hug, and for a moment, Tokiya stares at the growing pile of people in disbelief at how they are completely unable to talk about the topic.

“We can always do solo stuff while being part of STARISH,” Ren interjects.

“Indeed. It is not a monetarily wise decision, perhaps, but Otoya is right. We learn more from each other than we do alone. Breaking ties now would be a mistake,” Masato says with a nod.

“Ren! Masa!” Otoya says in elation at the bottom of the pile.

“We wouldn’t even know how to proceed without each other,” Syo says. “We’ve never been apart as idols.”

There is silence, and Tokiya realizes belatedly that they’re all staring at him. “What?” 

“We’re waiting for you, Tokiya-kun,” Natsuki says. “I believe the rest of us are in agreement.”

“We’re all in agreement,” he says. 

He’s not quite expecting Cecil and Natsuki to move on to him next, and he goes sprawling back against the grass as they cheer and tackle him.

“We should choose a leader,” Masato says. 

“Why do we need one?” Otoya asks as he sits up. “Aren’t we doing just fine without one?”

“Groups have problems all the time,” Syo says. “Right now, we have our mentors, but we won’t soon. We should have someone to unite us when things go wrong or we get into fights. Besides, we need someone to lead us in that whole group bow thing. I don’t know why it’s so hard, but we can’t seem to do it together to save our lives.”

“Why don’t we vote?” Natsuki suggests. 

Ren declares this an excellent idea before grabbing Masato’s bag and upending everything inside of it onto the grass. He throws the empty bag into the center of the circle and ignores Masato’s insulted gasp. “Write down your vote and stick it in there. Blind voting, so no peeking.”

“And you had to tip out everything in there for that?!” 

In the end, after paper and pens are passed around, it turns out they didn’t even need the blind votes. It’s 6-1 Otoya, and the redhead looks absolutely stunned.

“What?!” he asks, looking at them like they’ve all gone crazy. “What are you saying? I can’t be the leader of STARISH!”

“There’s no one better,” Ren says.

“You keep us together already,” Natsuki says with a giant smile. 

“Yeah, I mean, you’re already kind of the leader,” Syo says. “Like, when Masato and Ren start getting at each other, you’re always the one who steps in first and breaks them up, and you’re always talking about supporting everyone. I kinda didn’t realize you weren’t the leader already.”

Otoya looks at Tokiya imploringly, as if he didn’t just vote for Otoya, and he shrugs. “I think you’re the best choice,” he says simply. “No one cares more about STARISH than you do.”

“Are you saying that you don’t wish for the responsibility?” Masato asks, sounding as diplomatic as normal. “We do rely on you a lot, Otoya. I don’t think any of us wish for you to be uncomfortable.”

With the look everyone’s giving him, Tokiya knows it’s just a matter of time before Otoya gives in, but the second Cecil tugs on his sleeve and says, “the others were nice, but you made STARISH home,” that Tokiya knows they’ve won. Otoya melts and looks around at them with barely restrained tears.

“If you’re sure,” he says, and they all look around and nod at each other. “I’ll do my best.”

“It seems we’re fairly in sync today,” Masato remarks lightly. “Two unanimous decisions. Minus Otoya’s ridiculous vote for Tokiya-kun. No offense.”

Tokiya agrees that the idea of him as their leader is more than ridiculous. “Let’s look over the offers then,” he says.

 

There’s a couple of hours of number crunching and researching different agencies, and keeping on task by the end is more of a chore than anything. The sun is out, they’ve chosen to be a team, and they’re all happy. By the time they’ve chosen an offer to accept, Otoya’s head is resting on Tokiya’s thigh as he naps. He’d attempted to stay awake through the negotiations, but he definitely lost the battle after the second hour. Syo, Cecil, and Ren are just as lethargic, sprawled out in the grass, or in Syo’s case, asleep against the tree. 

Masato folds the chosen offer up and stuffs it back in the envelope. “I will approach the company,” he offers, and Tokiya agrees that’s best, since he’s also running the Hijirikawa business. He knows how to talk to large companies. 

“You decided?” Ren asks, moving his wrist slightly higher on his forehead so that he can see them. 

“Yes, no thanks to you,” Masato says primly.

“Are you saying you actually wanted my opinion, Masa?”

Masato chucks the corked inkwell that was previously in his bag at his roommate. 

Tokiya feels like a weight is off of his chest with that settled. They won’t be staying with Shining Agency—their offer was low in comparison—but with the due diligence they’ve just put in, he believes they will do well. There are only a few things left to settle, one being the redhead asleep on his lap. 

It’s odd how much things can change in a week, Tokiya muses as he stares down at his sleeping roommate. A week before he’d been recording his song, and then he’d walked out of the booth with all of the answers he’d been looking for. Well, maybe not the answer, he amends. He’s just more determined to reach for what he wants now.

Cecil wakes up Otoya when he meows and wakes up from his position on Otoya’s stomach. Natsuki had already picked up Syo to bring him back to their dorm, and Masato has given up his struggle against sleep, leaning back against his repacked bag with his eyes closed. Tokiya is about 95% sure that Ren is awake and watching with hooded eyes.

“Did I miss the end of the conversation?” Otoya asks, rubbing his eyes. 

Tokiya gives him the summary of their decision, and Otoya nods like he understands any of it as he tries to wake up. Once he looks like he might agree to get up rather than lay his head back down and sleep more, Tokiya taps his nose with a finger. “Think it’s time to have that conversation now?” he asks.

“Conversation? What . . .?” It takes a moment, but finally the question sinks in, and Otoya’s mouth drops open. “Now?”

“Do you want to?” He’s suddenly unsure, because while he doesn’t really know where Otoya’s mind is at on any of it, he had expected a little less hesitation on just talking about it.

There’s a beat of silence, and then Otoya nods. “Yeah.”

Tokiya pulls Otoya to his feet and, after they bid farewell to Cecil and Ren, leads him down the path they’d walked in the dark on Tokiya’s birthday. It feels different in the sun, but not in a bad way. The hill is still deserted, so it’s about as private as they’re going to get outside of their own dorm room, but Tokiya doesn’t want to get interrupted by Reiji on this one.

They look over the bustling cityscape. Otoya opens his mouth to say something, but Tokiya knows instinctively that he shouldn’t be the one starting this conversation. After all, Tokiya started all of this in that theme park bathroom more than a year ago. “Let me,” he says before Otoya can form the words he wants to say. “I just . . . be patient with me.” Even if his emotions on the topic are firm, he’s not sure that he’ll be able to express it properly.

Otoya just eyes him and nods warily.

“For a long time, I didn’t know how I felt about you,” he starts, figuring he might as well start from the beginning. “We went from rivals to friends so quickly that things started getting jumbled in my head, and that’s not your fault. I’m not sure that you ever considered me a rival, to be honest.”

“A rival in what?” Otoya asks, and Tokiya agrees he has a point.

“I don’t know. And then I started having all of these weird feelings around you. I got jealous of a girl you’ve been friends with longer than you’ve been friends with me,” he says, acknowledging what happened at the theme park with Tomochika, “but I didn’t realize what it was at the time. I just did what I wanted and then I didn’t explain myself because I didn’t know how. And that wasn’t fair to you. But you never asked.”

“I didn’t know what I wanted the answer to be,” Otoya admits.

“I didn’t figure out what I wanted it to be until your birthday.” A slight pink tinge rises in Otoya’s cheeks at the reminder of the kiss they’d shared over the table. “And I still don’t know exactly what it is. Sometimes it’s obvious and I know what I feel for you and at others, you have me so turned around that I don’t know which way is up.” 

“You don’t have to have the answer right now,” Otoya says, but Tokiya shakes his head.

“I don’t understand all of it, but I know that I’m in love with you.” The words form themselves, and his stomach lurches like he’s just jumped off of a dizzying height. Otoya’s eyes snap wide in surprise. “I have been for a while. And you don’t have to feel the same. I can’t ask you for that—"

The feeling of Otoya’s hand creeping into his cuts him off. He laces their fingers together, and Tokiya watches, transfixed by the difference in their skin tones and how their flesh sliding together makes the feeling in his stomach intensify. “Tokiya,” he says, and the word holds everything that Tokiya wants to hear: warmth and affection and the gentle smile that has spread over Otoya’s face. 

He can’t say anything that will top that, so he pulls on their joined hands to tug his roommate closer and kisses him. It’s soft and hesitant, unlike any of their previous kisses. It’s a question, and when Otoya responds, matching his affections, that’s all the answer Tokiya needs. Otoya’s free hand winds into his hair and the feeling of fingers moving against his scalp makes him shudder. 

“The day at the orphanage,” Otoya says when they part. “That’s when I figured it out.” He doesn’t let go, so Tokiya rests their foreheads against each other. “That’s when I realized I loved you.”

Hearing it said explicitly feels like he’s been kicked in the ribs with how hard his heart jolts. 

Tokiya thinks back, trying to pinpoint the moment he fell for his roommate, and when he really thinks hard about it, he thinks of the hot stage lights and a wink that turned his entire world upside down.


	16. SECRET LOVER

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It doesn't matter whether they're in their apartment or working during a blizzard in Ashikaga, Tokiya will always be happy to see Otoya.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, all things must come to an end, and so too does this fic. I'm sad to see it go, but I'm so happy with how it turned out, so there's a lot of bittersweet feelings here. If you've stuck around for the entire thing, thank you one last time! I hope you enjoyed reading this journey as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> I've already had someone ask, so feel free to use this universe for your own fanfictions. I'd love to see what you can create, and if you gift something to me, you'll probably receive something in return. :)
> 
> There's an author's note at the bottom that talks about my creative process with this fic, partially because one of my creative writing professors encouraged us to do that as we looked back at a piece, and partially because I love seeing how other people got inspired, so maybe this will help someone else write their own fic.

Tokiya taps his foot impatiently, staring at the expensive black leather so that he doesn’t look around the room for the millionth time. He’s not entirely sure what the studio uses for shoe polish, but he’s never worn a pair of shoes from them that weren’t shined to perfection.

He can hear the sounds of the crew in the hallway as he sits in the green room. He’s used to having someone else in here with him, but with the rare blizzard that had blown into Ashikaga only hours before, his companion is delayed. It honestly wouldn’t bother him if it weren’t Otoya and if it hadn’t been almost two months since he’d seen his boyfriend. 

It’s been eight months since they’ve graduated from Shining Agency’s Masters Course, and the road hasn’t been completely smooth. They put out an excellent first album that went platinum within the second week and enjoyed about three months of notoriety before it started to stagnate. Their manager, desperate for more success, had dipped into their personnel files to find an angle to exploit, stumbled upon Otoya’s background check, and they’d woken up to find the rags-to-riches story splashed on the front page of every newspaper.

Tokiya had never been so close to committing murder. Syo and Ren had dragged him out of the manager’s office after he’d lost his temper, but they hadn’t been there when Otoya had seen the news. They hadn’t seen the utter devastation in his expression or the fear that had permeated every move for weeks. They hadn’t held him quietly for the hours he’d cried after the orphanage had suggested they split ways until the media circus died down or sat with him as he stared at the patterns on the couch, completely silent. It had taken a month-long, fan-led boycott, termination of their previous contract, and a very long, very thorough conversation with their new manager before Tokiya had even brought up performing again. 

It helped that Otoya was beloved among their fans; they’d sent so much mail, particularly after it had come out that the studio had revealed that information without consulting with _any_ of STARISH, and Otoya had read all of it the hours preceding his first interview afterwards. Once that entire event had blown over, the new agency was determined to have them back in the public eye and had split them up to promote events and take on odd but high-profile jobs in various places. They’d even done an international stint for a month, where Masato, Ren, Cecil, and Tokiya had toured North America while Otoya, Syo, and Natsuki had been in the rest of Asia. 

This was their last push before Christmas in two weeks, where they’d get some time off, but Tokiya was missing Otoya like crazy already. He’d been mostly in northern Hokkaido, and they’d sent Otoya and Syo down to Okinawa and Kumamoto prefectures to help promote some of the tourist activities. Somehow, their schedules had crossed though, so both he and Otoya were supposed to be in Ashikaga for three days together before splitting off again, Otoya back down south and Tokiya to the north.

But then this blizzard had gotten in the way, and he had no idea whether or not Otoya would make it in time for this taping.

He knows that Otoya will show up at some point and probably be allowed to sit in the audience, but he misses working with the redhead too, even if he did often deviate from the script and say ridiculous things that left Tokiya floundering. They were partners, and they worked well together.

He sighs, glancing back at the clock for the millionth time since he’d been seated in the green room. Twenty minutes left; it wasn’t a lot of time, and he isn’t sure even if Otoya shows up this second whether they’d be able to work a miracle to get him out on the set on time.

“Ichinose-san?” one of the aides interrupts. He looks up at her. “You asked to be informed when Ittoki-san arrived.”

His heart leaps in his chest, temporarily resting in his throat and making it hard to speak. “Which room is he in?” he asks, making sure to keep his tone even.

“Makeup Room 2. Although you might not want to go in there yet. Styling is going to need to take a lot of time.”

The way that she says that is suspicious, particularly since she won’t meet his eyes, and he has the sinking suspicion something has gone wrong. This _is_ Otoya, and his noble streak has caused him to get into some bizarre and dangerous situations. Syo calls it “white knight syndrome”. 

Panic makes him quicken his steps slightly as he makes his way to the music room. What he _isn’t_ expecting is to find is his boyfriend in the middle of the throng of hair and makeup artists, completely soaked through to the point that he has a fairly large puddle of water continuing to grow around him on the floor. “What did you _do_?!” he can’t help but ask.

Otoya’s face lights up. “Tokiya!” he says before his expression drops. “You weren’t supposed to see this,” he says through chattering teeth.

The makeup techs look absolutely lost as to how to proceed with the idol dripping water, so Tokiya takes the dry towel one of them is holding and throws it over his boyfriend’s head to start the slow process of ridding his hair of the water it seems to want to hold. He’s fairly practiced at this; neither Otoya nor Syo stop playing soccer when the rain starts. 

Of course, the rain when they play soccer is not a _blizzard_. The aides start helping him strip off his soaked outer layers, which seem to consist of a windbreaker and a flannel overshirt. “Please tell me you at least had a jacket out there.”

“He did not,” the aide that fetched him from the green room says. “And he walked eight blocks in the rain and snow because the car couldn’t get to the staff entrance.”

“You did _what_?!” Tokiya asks.

His concern is clear in his hands apparently, because Otoya yelps and reminds him that his hair is still attached to his head. “I was supposed to slide in with a couple of minutes to spare and surprise you,” he mutters. 

“You idiot,” Tokiya replies. His mood is wavering between annoyed and elated, and he doesn’t want to see Otoya’s face until he’s figured out which it is, because seeing the redhead will always tip him to the more positive emotion and Tokiya’s still worried about him turning into an icicle. He sticks a hand under the towel to gauge how dry his hair is without having to lift it up and see the puppy dog eyes that he knows will be staring back at him. 

Otoya’s hand latches onto his wrist and as his fingers stroke damp hair, he can feel a kiss being pressed to his palm. There is a flutter in his stomach at the contact and Tokiya tamps it down in favor of returning to his task. A few minutes later, Otoya is about as dry as they can get him without a hair dryer, and those come out, as well as the garment department to get him dressed in dry clothing. 

Tokiya is forced to wait back in the green room, and with two minutes until they go live, Otoya enters too. His face is a little pink, the color high in his cheeks, and he’s still shivering, but he’s there and when he throws himself at Tokiya, he has the biggest smile on his face. The crew is in the room, so they can’t quite have the moment that Tokiya wants them to be able to have for their reunion, but Otoya’s whispered “I missed you” makes him almost say fuck it to their attempt at hiding their relationship. 

Instead, he whispers it back and loudly says something about how Otoya is still cold so that he can fold him into his arms for longer than just the perfunctory few seconds, even occasionally adding a half-assed rubbing motion as if to create friction.

“Thirty seconds,” the stage aide tells them and then melts at the image they make. “You guys are so cute. It’s like you’re brothers.”

Tokiya can feel Otoya’s suppressed laughter as he releases him. “We’re quite close,” Tokiya says briskly. 

“Ready to go?” Otoya asks him, holding out his hand for a high five.

Tokiya rolls his eyes and readjusts the lapels of his boyfriend’s jacket instead. “Let’s go.”

 

Tokiya wakes up early the next morning, although he gives in to the desire to lay in bed for a few minutes longer than he might have otherwise because of the warm weight of Otoya’s arms around him. His boyfriend is still sleeping peacefully and his breath is hot against the crook of Tokiya’s neck. Even when Tokiya sits up and slides backwards to rest his back against the headboard, Otoya only snuffles and readjusts his head to rest on the pillow instead.

They hadn’t left the room once they’d arrived the previous night, partially because once Otoya was finally warm, Tokiya had been loathe to expose him to the elements again. He’d spent most of the talk show session shivering, blaming it on his recent stints in Okinawa making him vulnerable to the cool northern weather. After the segment was over, they had made it to the hotel and then Otoya had pressed him back against the door of their hotel room, kissing him so desperately Tokiya had seen stars. It was so nice to be desired by someone who he actually wanted to be desired by that it had distracted him for a few minutes. Eventually, he remembered that his boyfriend was still in wet clothes and sent him in to take a bath to warm up while Tokiya unpacked his suitcase.

Since Otoya doesn’t seem to be waking up anytime soon, Tokiya is glad for his foresight in keeping his lyrics notebook next to the bed so that all he has to do is reach over to the nightstand. The room feels cold, even with a long-sleeved shirt on, although he could have sworn it wasn’t as bad the morning before. He supposes that has something to do with the warm body next to him, and he gives in to a whim to trace his fingers down the bicep that is now thrown over Tokiya’s lap rather than his chest. 

Writing lyrics is still not easy for him, and he’s found there are a few things he’s written at this point that he doesn’t wish for the world to see: the deep, gooey feelings that he has problems admitting to the man he’s in love with, for example. The solution came to him one night when he’d been toying with the tune he’d had in his head since comforting Otoya in the park with the sweet potatoes. The resulting song, which he’d titled Moonlight, felt too personal to record for an album to release, but he wanted to be able to share it with the object of his affections, at least. So, Otoya was getting a personalized album of songs for Christmas, assuming Tokiya ever got back into the studio to record them. He has a feeling this is going to be the last one he can do, at least for this disc; they always leave him feeling a bit emotionally drained, particularly with their recent separation. Still, he wants to do one while he can stare at the person who seems to be his greatest muse.

If only he’d figured this out when they were releasing those love songs back during the Masters Course, he thinks ruefully.

He starts with the normal stream of consciousness and revises from there, occasionally smoothing Otoya’s hair when he stirs and pressing gentle kisses to his forehead when the tenderness in his chest becomes too much. 

It’s a couple of hours as Tokiya writes and Otoya sleeps on, and the time is quiet but not lonely. It feels like they’ve been given a small corner of the world to slow down, and Tokiya savors the moments where he doesn’t have to think about anyone else. 

Eventually, Otoya rouses, blinking sleepily up at Tokiya. “What are you doing up?” he asks, his gaze landing on the notebook on Tokiya’s knees.

The key to not arousing Otoya’s suspicions is to act like nothing is out of the ordinary, so he simply closes it and puts it aside. “Writing lyrics.”

Otoya’s nose wrinkles. “Not another SECRET LOVER.”

“You love that song.” Tokiya suppresses his chuckle and leans over his boyfriend when the normal flush appears on his cheeks. Otoya gives a whine in the back of his throat and rolls over to hide his face in the pillow.

SECRET LOVER had been one of the more playful songs Tokiya had written about Otoya in the earliest stages of their relationship, but it hadn’t _really_ gotten a reaction from the redhead beyond an emphatic nod that he loved it, which had struck Tokiya as a little odd when Otoya had insisted he release it to the public. Come to find out, it hadn’t quite clicked that the song was about him until all of STARISH was on a talk show and Tokiya was talking in oblique but true terms about his secret lover. Otoya had interrupted with a “wait, what?!” before it had sunk in, and then he had turned a delicious shade of red that the entire country watching the show had seen. 

Slipping back under the covers, Tokiya presses a kiss to the back of his neck, nipping with his teeth when his boyfriend doesn’t roll back over to expose his mouth. “ _Just for me, lover, endlessly / Please show me that you love me,_ ” he sings, using that breathy tone he knows Otoya adores. The redhead squirms, and suddenly Tokiya finds himself locked in a heated kiss that takes his breath away. 

When they part, Otoya’s eyes slip closed again, and he pulls Tokiya more securely against him. “We need to get up,” Tokiya reminds him. 

“Five more minutes,” he pleads, not moving at all.

“No, because then you’ll just go back to sleep.” 

That gets Otoya’s eyes to open, a mischievous smirk on his lips. “I don’t want the five minutes to sleep,” he says, and Tokiya’s heart skips a few beats at the stare he receives through hooded eyes. It’s moments like these, where all of Otoya’s attention and passion is on Tokiya and it’s too early for anything else to have worked him up, that Tokiya cherishes the most. 

Tokiya feels callused fingers sliding up the back of his shirt, kneading against his spine in little circles. “I want more than five minutes then,” he replies. 

Otoya just laughs and kisses him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And, it's over! Let's talk about the process that went into this fic.
> 
> I knew that I wanted to write something with Otoya and Tokiya the first time I listened to ROULETTE. It sounds like they're singing to each other, but I couldn't figure out what I wanted to write about. Part of the problem was that I didn't particularly like Tokiya at all (I know, hard to guess, right?). I've talked a little bit about how stilted his character development has been, in my humble opinion, and I had the feeling that if I could work with him a little bit, he might end up being more interesting than I'd thought.
> 
> And then I listened to Independence. Where the hell that Tokiya came from, I have no idea, but it kicked my brain into high gear as I wondered how I'd missed that kind of change, and then later, how that change would have come about. That became the basis of Independence: how did Tokiya get from Mr. Grumpypants to singing about how he wanted change in a rather suggestive way? So, I took the end of the first season and ran with it.
> 
> The first problem I had to solve was how to get Tokiya and Otoya to talk about their feelings, because Tokiya is a Grade A avoider, but Otoya isn't overly talkative about his own issues either. My first attempt had Reiji moved out of the dorm room, which could have worked, but then I realized Reiji is a fantastic foil for Otoya. Reiji is almost never sincere, in contrast to Otoya, who is always sincere, but they both care about Tokiya deeply. In the end, I added him back in because they needed a buffer. They knew how to not talk, as per the first season. Now they had to be forced to talk. So, Reiji.
> 
> The second problem was that I had chosen a very close third-person perspective, which meant that when Tokiya was being dense, the audience got an unreliable narrator. I worked hard to figure out where Otoya's mind was at all times in this fic, but because Tokiya wouldn't recognize that, it pretty much all got ignored. I hope that he didn't seem too out of character, because he had motivation for everything that he did.
> 
> I got lucky in this fic that everything blended together well. I didn't have to struggle to tie in anything, and other than cutting some scenes of pure conversation, almost everything survived editing. I've honestly never had that happen, and the fact that it did for a fanfiction and not the novel I was writing before this only has me a little bitter. I've never had it happen before, so thank you, divine inspiration. Let it be known that the gods apparently also like boys kissing.
> 
> I've enjoyed writing in this universe, and I will dip back into it again soon. I've already had a request to write the SECRET LOVER scene from this epilogue, and it's mostly written in my head, so whoops. If you want to chat with me, feel free to send me a message! I'm also now on Twitter (@melodycanta). I'm still new, so feel free to shove things my way. 
> 
> As I said before, it's been a pleasure writing for you all, and I hope to do more soon! Thank you!!!!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Crystal Time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16226738) by [Lana_Fair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lana_Fair/pseuds/Lana_Fair)




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